The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-01-06
STILL MORE oF STOWE
Why Lord Byron Must Have Been
Guilty-The Physiological Ar
gumeDt, and it's Bearing
Against Him.

lsoru byron must nave been ullty OF the crime
of which she charges him, because of his abnor-
NAL constitutions
Tie credibility of the accusation of the nm
natural crime charged to Lord Byron is greater
than If charged to most men. lie was born of
parents both of whom were remarkable for per-
tectly ungoverned passions. There appears to
be historical evidence that he was speaking
literal truth when he says to Medwin of his
father:-
"ne would have made bad hero for Hannah
More. He ran out three fortunes, and married Cr
ran away with three women. He Sc med born
his ruin and that OF the other sex. lie began
by seducng Lady Carmartneo, aud spent her four
ture OF this Kind afterwards elOped with Miss Cor
don."-MedWia'S Conversations, p. 81.
Lady Carmarthen here spoken of was the
mother of Mrs, Leigh. Miss Gordon became
Lord Byrons mother.
By his own account and that of Moore she
was passionate, ungoverned though affection
ate woman. Lord Byron says to Medwin:-
al lost my father when was only SIX years of age
My mother, when she was in passion with me and
gave her cause enough used to say, 80 you little
dog you are Byron all over! you are as bad as
your latherV-Ibd.i p 81.
By all the accounts of his childhood and early
youth, it is made apparent that ancestral causes
had sent him into the world with most perilous
and exceptional sensitiveness of brain and
nervous system, which 1t would have required
the most judicious course of education to direct
safely and happily.
Lord Byron often speaks AS If he deemed him
self subject to tendencies which might terminate
in insanity. The idea Is so often mentioned and
dwelt upon in his letters, journals, and con-
versations that we cannot but ascribe 1t to
some very peculiar experience, and not to mere
affectation.
But i'm the history of his early childhood and
youth, we see no evidence of any original mall
formation of nature. We see only evidence of
one of those organizations, full of hope and full
of peril which adverse influences might easily
drive to insanity, but wise physiological train
inU md moral m hay
guided to the most splendid results. But of
these he had neither. He was alternately the
pet and victim of his mothers tumultuous ma
ture, and equally injured both by her love and
her anger. Scotch maid of religious charac-
ter gave him early serious impressions of reli-
gion, and thus added the element of an awak-
ened conscience 10 the conflicting ones of his
character.
Education, in the proper sense of the word, did
not exist in England in those days. PhysiolOgi-
cal considerations of the influence of the body
ON the soul, of the power OF brain and nerve
over moral development, had then not even en-
tered the general thought of society. The school
and college education literally taught him no.
thing but the ancient classics, of whose power
in exciting and developing the animal passions
| Byron often speaks.
| The morality of the times is stril1ingly exem-
| plifed even In its literary criticism.
| For example;--One of Byrons poems, written
while schoolboy at Harrow, is addressed to
| 'My Son." Mr.. Moore, and the annotator of
the standard edition of Byron's poems, gravely
| give the public their speculatons on the point
| whether Lord Byron first became father while
q schoolboy in Harrow; and 60 into particulars
in relation to o certain infant, the claim to which
| lay between Lord Byron and another schoel-
fellow. 1t is not the nature of the event itself,
| so much as the COOL unembarrassed manner in
which it is discussed, that gives the impression
| of the state OF public morals. There is no int-
| nation of anything unusual, or discreditable to
! the school, in the event, aud no apparent suspi-
cion that it will be regarded as serious imputa-
| ton on Lord Byron's character
Modern physiological developments would
| lead any person versed in the study of the recp,
| rocal influence of physical and moral laws to
| anticipate the most serious danger to such an
| organization as Lord Byrons, from precocious
development of the passions Alcoholic and
narcotic stimulants, in the case of such person,
would be regarded as little less than suicidal,
and an early course of combined drinking aud
licentousness as tending directly to establish
those unsound conditions which lead towards
| moral insanity. Yet not only Lord Byron's
testimony, but every probability from the
license of society, goes to show that this was
exactly what did take place.
Neither restrained by education, nor warned
by any correct physiological knowledge, nor
held in check by any public sentiment, he drifted
directly upon the fatal rock.
| Here we give Mr.. Moore full credit for all his
abatements IN regard to Lord Byrons excesses
in his early days. Moore makes the point very
strongly that he was not, dc fdoto even so bad
as many of his associates; and we agree with him.
|
fine and sensitive as that of the most delicate
woman. He possessed the faculty of moral ideality
| in high degrees and he had not, in the earlier
part of his life, an attraction towards mere brutal
| vice. His physical sensitiveness was so remark
able that he says of himself, "a dose of salts
has the effect of temporary inebriatlen, like
light champagne, upon me-. Yet this excep-
tionally delicately organized boy and youth was
in circle where not TO conform to the coarse
drinking customs of his day was to incur CEN
sure and ridicule. That he early acquired the
power of bearing large quantities of liquor is
manifested by the record in his journal that, on
the day when he read the severe Edinburgh"
article upon his schoolboy poems, he drank
three bottles of claret at sitting.
| Yet Byron was so far superior to his times,
| that some vague impulses to physiological pru-
dence seem to have suggested themselves to
| him, and been acted upon with great vigOr. He
! never could have lived so long as he did under
the exhaustive process of every kind of excess,
if he had not reinforced his physical nature by
an assiduous care of his muscular system. He
took boxing lessons, and distinguished himself
| in all athletic exercises.
He also had periods in which he seemed to
try vaguely to retrieve himself from dissipation,
and to acquire self-mastery by what ne called
temperance.
But. ignorant and excessive in all his move
rnents his very efforts at temperance were In
| temperate. From violent excesses In eating
and drinking, he would pass to no less unnatural
periods of utter abstinence. Thus the very
conservative power which nature has OF adapt
ing herself to any settled course was lost. The
extreme sensitiveness produced by long periods
of utter abstinence made the succeeding debauch
! more maddening and fatal. He was ike hne
musical instrument whose strings were every
day alternating between extreme tension and
perfect laxity. We have in his journal many
passages, of which the following Is speci'