The Press.
London, England, 1858-05-15 00:00:00

HE PRESS, MAY 15, 1858

pasteboard dagger to be flashing steel, the rap-
tures to be real, and the thunder the product of
electricity and not of sheet-iron. Those who
wish to retain their enthusiasm for Byron un-
shaken should perhaps abstain from reading his
life by Moore, certainly from forming any. ac-
quaintance with him by means of Lady Blessing-
ton or Mr. Trelawny.
Mr. Carlyle tells us that, if no man is a hero
to his valet, it is because none but a hero can
comprehend a hero. Unfortunately, however,
the lives of heroes are not commonly written by
men of their own stamp. And when the biogra-
pher himself is a man of power and mark, he is
not always exempt from the propensity to strip
his subject of his trappings, and exhibit him with
his bow-legs and without his wig; which is, of
course, natural to valets, but not necessarily so to
men of other professions. Has not Mr. Carlyle
himself, in his "Life of Sterling," destroyed the
prestige which Archdeacon Hare had taken so
much pains to build up ? Has he not, in a few
graphic words, drawn a caricature of Coleridge
which that philosopher's greatest admirers will
never be able to dissociate from their idea of him?
We must not then be surprised if a man like Mr.
Trelawny, in whom the contempt often felt by
practical for imaginative men is strongly evident,
flu from "garlanding the tomb " with his votive
chaplet, lifts the laurel from the poet's brow to
expose his baldness. The motive is somewhat
frankly avowed. " Any man," says he at p. 37,
" who cultivates his intellectual faculty so highly
"as to seem at times inspired, would be too much
" above us, if on closer inspection, we should not
" find it alloyed with weaknesses akin to our own.
"Byron soon put you at your ease on this point."
Mr. Trelawny found such traits in Byron's
character as must have produced entire con-
tentment with his own. Unlike Shelley, whose
manners were always simple and self-possessed,
Byron was embarrassed at meeting with strangers,
and talked a vast deal of nonsense to conceal his
want of dignity. While Shelley was in the
habit of frankly expressing his admiration for
his friend's poetry, Byron refused to second that
which he felt by overt acts :
Taking advantage of a panegyric on Shelley, I observed
he might do him a great service at little cost, by a friendly
word or two in his next work, such as he had bestowed on
authors of less merit
" Av," he said, with a significant look, " who reads
them If we puffed the Snake [i e. Shelley], it might
not turn out a profitable investment. If be cast off the
slough of his mystifying metaphysics, he would want no
puffing."
Seeing I was not satisfied, be added,
" if we introduced Shelley to our readers, they might
draw comparisons, and they are ' odorous."

After Shelley's death, Byron said the world had
never done him justice, but, says his biographer,
" he never drew his weapon to redress any wrongs
" but his own."

Mr. Trelawny disposes of Byron's claims as a
traveller in an equally manner. After
enumerating the countries he visited and the
time he spent in them—certainly not of great
amount—and his mode of travelling, generally
on board of a comfortable man-of-war, he points
out what a very narrow circle comprises his
wanderings :

Any man might go, and many have gone without the aid
of steam, over the same ground in a few months—even if
he had to walk with a knapsack, where Byron root,. The
Pilgrim moved about hke a Pasha, with a host of
attendants, and all that he and they required on the
journey. So far as I could learn from Fletcher, his
yeoman bold—and he had been with him from the time of
his fist leaving England,— Byron, wherever he was, so far
as it was practicable, pursued the same lazy, dawdling
habits he continued during the time I knew him. He was
seldom out of his bed before noon, when be drank a cup of
very strong green tea, without sugar or milk. At two he
ate a biscuit and drank soda water. At three he mounted
his horse and sauntered along the road—and generally the
same road,—if alone, racking his brains for fitting matter
and rhymes for the coming poem, he dined at seven, as
frugally as anchorites are said in story-books to have done,
at nine he visited the family of Count Gamba, on his
return home he sat reading or composing until two or
three o'clock in the morning, and then to bed, often
feverish, restless and exhausted—to dream, as be said, more
than to sleep
His conversation was anything hut literary, except when
Shelley was near him. The character lie must commonly
appeared in was of the free and easy sort, such as had been
in vogue when he was in London, and George IV. was
Regent ; and his talk was seasoned with anecdotes of the
great actors on and off the stage, boxers, gamblers, duellists,
drunkards. dzc., be., appropriately garnished with the
slang and scandal of that day. Such things had all been
in fashion, and were at that time considered accomplish-
ments by gentlemen; and of this tribe of Mohawks the
Prince Regent was the chief, and allowed to be the most

perfect specimen. Byron, not knowing the tribe was
extinct, still prided himself on having belonged to it;
a:f
nothing was he more indignant, than of being treated s
a
man of letters, in stead of as a lord and a man of
fashion: this prevented foreigners and literary people
from getting on with him, for they invariably so
offended. His long absence had not effaced the mark
John Bull brands his children with ; the instant he loomed
above the horizon, on foot or horseback, you saw et a
glance he was a Britisher. He did not understand
foreigners, nor they him ; and, during the time l knew
him, he associated with no Italians except the family of
Count Mamba. He seemed to take an especial pleasure in
making a clean breast to every new comer, as if to mock
their previous conceptions of him, and to give the lie to the
portraits published of him.
It has generally been supposed that Lord Byron
drank deeply ; and the charge appears to have
been founded on the testimony of Moore, who
associated with him at Venice. Lord Macaulay
talks of the " midnight draughts of ardent spirits
" and Rhenish wines " which " had begun to
" work the ruin of his fine intellect." Mr. Tre-
lawny's testimony is very different. He defends
his sobriety ; though, indeed, he defends it at the
expense of his manliness and his sincerity. Byron,
he tells us, was in the habit of boasting of the
quantity of wine he had drunk, but was in reality
most abstemious both in eating and drinking. A
glass or two of small claret or hock, and, when
utterly exhausted at night, a single glass of very
weak grog, was his usual allowance. Yet he
called all his English acquaintances in Italy
" milksops." It has also been said that from
motives of affectation he wished to be thought to
live on the simplest food, but that after dining,
perhaps, on a few potatoes before a large party,
he would go to his club and eat a hearty supper
of cold meat. Mr. Trelawny enables us to view
such an act (if it really occurred) in a different
light. Byron's lameness prevented his taking
sufficient exercise, and he had an unfortunate
tendency to get fat, to counteract which he re-
duced his diet almost to starvation-point. Thus
he was always hungry, and, as a natural conse-
quence, always more or less irritable. But some-
times (as Gibbon would say) "insulted nature
vindicated her rights " after the following
fashion :

He would exist on biscuits and sola•water for days
together, then, to allay the eternal hunger gnawing at his
vitals, he would make up a horrid mess of cold potaoes,
rioe, fish, or greens, deluged in vinegar, and gobble it up
like a famished dog. Oa either of these unsavoury dishes,
with a biscuit and a glass or two of Rhine wine, he cared
not how sour, he called feasting sumptuously. Upon my
observing he might as well have fresh fish and vegetables,
instead of stale, he laughed and answered,
" I have an advantage over you, I have no palate; one
thing is as good as another to me."

Mr. Trelawny is equally contemptuous about
Byron's powers as a swimmer :
As he seldom indulged in this sport, and when he did,
over-exerted himself, he suffered severely ; which observing
and knowing how deeply he would be mortified at being
beaten, I had the magnanimity when contending with him
to give in.
He had a misgiving in his mind that I was trifling with
him ; and one day as we were on the snore, and the
Bulivar at anchor, about three miles off, he insisted on
our trying conclusions ; we were to swim to the yacht,
dine in the sea alongside of her, treading water the while,
and then to return to the shore. It was calm and hot, and
seeing he would not be fobbed ofd we started. I reached
the boat a long time before he did; ordered the edibles to
be ready, and floated until he arrived. We ate our faro
leisurely, from off a gratiiig that floated alongside, drank a
bottle of ale, and I smoked a cigar, which he tried to
extinguish,—as he never smoked. We then put about, and
struck off towards the shore. We had not got a hundred
yards on our passage, when be retched violently, sod, as
that is often followed by cramp, I urged him to put his
hand on my shoulder that I might tow him back to the
schooner.
" Keep off, you villain, don't touch me. I'll drown ere
I give in."
I answered as !ago did to Roderigo, "
A fig for drowning ! drown cats and blind puppies.' I
shall go on board and try the effects of a glass of grog to

stay my stomach."
" Come. on," he shouted, " I am always better after

vomiting."
With difficulty I deluded him back; I went on board,
and he sat on the steps of the accommodation-ladder, with
his feet in the water. I handed him a wiue-glass of
brandy, and screened him from the burning sun. He was
in a sullen mood, bat after a time resumed his usual tone.
Nothing conld induce him to he landed in the schooner.*
boat, though I protested I had bad enough of the water.
"You may do as you like," be called out, and plumped
in, and we swam on shore.
He never afterwards alluded to this event, nor to his
prowess in swimming, to me, except in the past tense. Ile
was ill, and kept his bed for two days afterwards.
Still, three miles out and back, though possibly a
trifle to an athlete like the biographer, is not bad
swimming, particularly for a half-starved man.

And we presume that the Leandrian exploit is
not yet to be classed as a myth.
111 r. Trelawny accompanied Byron to Greece.
He was not with him at his death, but reached
the house a few days afterwards. Fletcher, the
servant of the deceased, immediately led him up
to the room where the dead body lay embalmed.
He made the best use of the opportunity of satis-
fying his curiosity :
I asked Fletcher to bring sue a glass of water. On his
leaving the room, to confirm or remove my doubts as to
the cause of his lameness, I uncovered the Filgrim's feet,
and was answered—the great mystery was solved. Both
his feet were clubbed, and hie legs withered to the knee—
the form and features of an Apollo, with the feet and legs
of a sylvan satyr
Kuowing and sympathising with Byron's sensitiveness,
his associates avoided prying into the cause of his lame.
nese; so did strangers, from good breeding or common
humanity. It was generally thought his halting gait
originated in some defect of the right foot or ankle—the
right foot was the most distorted, and it had been made
worse in his boyhood by vain efforts to set it right. He
told me that for several years he wore steel splints, which
so wrenched the sinews and tendons of his leg that they
increased his lameness ; the foot was twisted inwards, only
the edge touched the ground, and that leg was shorter than
the other. His shoes were peculiar—very high heeled,
with the soles uncommonly thick on the inside and pared
thin on the outside—the toes were stuffed with cotton•
wool, and his trousers were very large below the knee and
strapped down so as to cover his feet. The peculiarity of
his gait was now accounted for; he entered a room with
a sort of run, as if he could not atop, then planted his best
leg well forward, throwing back his body to keep his
balance. In early life, whilst his frame was light and
elastic, with the aid of a stick he might have tottered along
for a mile or two; but after he had waxed heavier, he
seldom attempted to walk more than a few hundred yards,
without squatting down or leaning agninet the first wall,
bank, rock, or tree at hand, never sitting on the ground, as
it would have been difficult for him to get up again. In
the company of strangers, occasionally, he would make
desperate efforts to conceal his infirmity, but the hectic
flush on his face, his swelling veins, and quivering nerves
betrayed him, and he suffered for many days after such
exertions. Disposed to fatten, incapable of taking exercise
to check the tendency, what could he do? If he added to
his weight, his feet would not have supported him ; in
this dilemma he was compelled to exist in a state of semi.
starvation ; he was less than eleven stone when at Genoa,
sad said he had been fourteen at Venice. The pangs of
hunger which travellers and shipwreckei mariners have
described were nothing to what he suffered; their priva-
tions were temporary, his were for life, and more unendur-
able, as be was in the midst of abundance.

While Mr. Trelawny stood in contemplation of
the corpse, Fletcher returned from his errand ;
and, " without making any remark, drew the
" shroud and pall carefully over the feet of his
" master's corpse"—by which it would appear that
the "valet" this case "comprehended the hero"
better than the biographer. Mr. Trelawny
copied an unfinished letter of Byron's, which
he here prints, and collected the papers in the
room, comprising, among other fragments, " fif-
" teen stanzas of the seventeenth canto of ' Don
" Juan.' " After so many youthful bards have
tried their hands at " continuations" of that
poem, it would have been interesting to see what
its author's own ideas were on the subject ; but
Mr. Trelawny has not favoured us with any
means of forming an opinion. His book, as we
have seen, is throughout devoted much more to
.be personal peculiarities of Byron than to the
elucidation of his literary genius. Concerning
the latter, we get only a few scattered notices—
such as the influence exercised on him by Shel-
ley—his incaparity of writing except when the
fit seized him—his intention of writing a fifth
canto of " Childe Harold" (which was to contain,
among other matters, a description of Stromboli
in eruption)—; but not such a delineation of it as,
with the opportunities he enjoyed, Mr. Trelawny
might have accomplished for us. The book is
an interesting one ; it could hardly be otherwise ;
but it is more than ordinarily painful as regards
both the distinguished men whom it describes.
The latter chapters are devoted to Mr. Trelavmy's
own adventures in Greece, in company with
the interlocutors in that unusually dull dialogue
in which he figures in Mr. Landor's " Imaginary
Conversations."

Historical and Biographical Essays. By John
Forster. In Two Vols. London : Murray.

Tns three historical essays of which the first
volume of this publication is composed are en-
titled " The Grand Remonstrance," " The Plan-
tagenets and Tudors," and " The Civil
.Wars
and Oliver Cromwell." The first of them gives
us a very graphic account of the great contest in
the House of Commons during the winter of
1641-2, when that appeal to the people known as