And bends the gallant mast, my boys, Away the good ship flies, and leaves O for a soft and gentle wind! But give to me the snoring breeze, There's tempest in yon horned moon, The wind is piping loud, my boys, HENRY KIRKE WHITE. (1785-1806.) H. K. WHITE was born in Nottingham: like Akenside, he was the son of a butcher, and, after attempting his father's trade, and that of stocking-weaving, his taste and ambition led him to place himself in a more advantageous situation, by entering an attorney's office. His verses attracted the notice of generous patrons, particularly Southey. At the age of seventeen he published a volume of poetry, the profits of which were to supply the means of accomplishing his great ambition, an education at Cambridge, to qualify him for the ecclesiastical functions. He was rapidly acquiring distinction, when the severity of his studies terminated his life. Amidst the savage satire of the "English Barus," etc., it is pleasant to see Byron writing thus "Unhappy White, when life was in its spring, And thy young muse just waved her joyous wing, Oh, what a noble heart was here undone, * 'Twas thine own genius gave the final blow, And winged the shaft that quivered to his heart." TO AN EARLY PRIMROSE. 449 Kirke White's life and death were alike beautiful: his poetry of course is that of promise. It "abounds," says Byron, "in such beauties, as must impress the reader with the liveliest regret that so short a period was allotted to talents which would have dignified even the sacred functions he was destined to assume." TO AN EARLY PRIMROSE. MILD offspring of a dark and sullen sire! And cradled in the winds. Thee, when young Spring first question'd Winter's sway, Thee on this bank he threw To mark his victory. In this low vale, the promise of the year, Thy tender elegance. So virtue blooms, brought forth amid the storms Of life she rears her head, Obscure and unobserved; While every bleaching breeze that on her blows And hardens her to bear CONCLUDING STANZAS OF THE CHRISTIAD. Thus far have I pursued my solemn theme, The lyre which I in early days have strung; On the dark cypress! and the strings which rung Or when the breeze comes by, moan, and are heard no more. And must the harp of Judah sleep again? Shall I no more reanimate the lay? Oh! thou who visitest the sons of men, Thou who dost listen when the humble pray, One little space prolong my mournful day! I am a youthful traveller in the way, And this slight boon would consecrate to thee, On the earlier years of the present century burst like a thunderbolt the genius of Lord Byron. Differing from every preceding type in English literature, he came to found a new school, and to suggest new standards of taste. The epics of Southey, the ballads of Wordsworth, the odes of Coleridge, and the Gothic lays of Scott, were paled before the terrible beauty of the new meteor that dazzled all eyes. No sooner did Byron's great poem begin its advent, than all Britain was at his feet. The idolatry was perpetuated, not only by the successive appearances of his varied works, but by the mystery which he loved to throw around his life, his adventures, and misfortunes. The poet was born in London in 1788. His father was Captain John Byron, nephew to the existing head of the family; his mother was Miss Gordon of Gight, an Aberdeenshire heiress, whom Captain Byron had married purely for her fortune. Mrs. Byron was a woman of violent and capricious passions, with an infatuated and ill-regulated attachment to her husband, who soon ruined her fortune, and reduced BYRON. her to the necessity of retiring with her infant son to Aberdeen, on a 451 small annuity, which her profligate husband farther narrowed by his exactions. When there remained no more to extort from his wife, he finally left her, and died on the continent. The young George received the usual education. As a child, he was bold and wayward, but ardently affectionate. His great personal beauty was marred by the deformity in his right foot that caused his lameness through life: allusions to this, in which his injudicious mother indulged herself in her stormy moods,1 would throw him into ecstacies of anger. By the death of his eccentric grand-uncle in 1798, George, unfortunately perhaps for the development of his future character, succeeded to the family honours and estates at the age of ten years. His proud mother immediately removed to Newstead Abbey, the family seat in Nottinghamshire. in Dr. Glennie's institution at Dulwich, as much with a view to the cure During his residence of his foot as to education, his guardian Lord Carlisle and the doctor were tormented by the perpetual interference of his mother. He afterwards went to Harrow, and thence to Cambridge. At school and at the university he was the plague of his instructors, by his utter neglect of discipline and of study, at least of that which discipline prescribes. Another feature of his school and university life was the almost feminine ardour of his friendships. His friend and biographer Moore notices many feminine peculiarities in the fitful ardour of Byron's mind, his violent likings and dislikes, capricious sullenness, and sudden passions of tears. From his childhood he was a diligent reader. Before his eighth year he had perused, under the care of his religious nurse, the whole Old Testament; and the catalogue in Moore's Life of the books he had read before the age of fifteen, presents an amazing amount of industry, and accounts for the facile mastery he had over the English language. The Cambridge vacations he spent partly near Newstead, which had been let, and chiefly in different places with his mother, whose alternate fits of affection and violence, which her son took a malicious pleasure in provoking, must have deeply exasperated the worse parts of his character. On one occasion, after a violent quarrel, mother and son went each secretly to a chemist's shop to ascertain if the other had been to purchase poison. His attachment to Mary Chaworth, the young heiress of Annesley Hall, near Newstead, shed a gleam of sunshine on the poet's existence. Had this attachment proved fortunate, his destiny might have been very different; but the capricious beauty slighted the almost worshipping affection of the "lame boy." and his own uncontrolled passions were against the unhappy poet; Fate libertinism was commencing its corruption, scepticism was unhinging the principles of right and wrong in his moral and intellectual nature: an unquiet home, and a rejected love on the threshold of youth, are not things calculated to clothe the world with attractive hues in the eyes of any one, and much less in those of a haughty and unquiet spirit like 1 He alludes to these scenes in the "Deformed Transformed: " "Bertha. Out, hunchback! I was born so, mother!" 2 The poet more than once records his affectionate recollections of his early life in Scotland; for instance, in "Lochnagar," and the verses on "Auld Lang Syne" in Don Juan. 3 During one of his noisy altercations with her, Dr. Glennie had the pain of hearing one of Byron's companions remark to him, "Byron, your mother is a fool," to which he gloomily replied, "I know it." 4 With what depth of feeling he lamented this result may be seen in the "Dream," and in the verses beginning, "Well, thou art happy," etc. ΤΙ Byron's. His earliest publication (1807), the "Hours of Idleness," called forth the merciless and somewhat coarse criticism of the Edinburgh Review (January 1808), which subsequently elicited the first specimen of the noble poet's real powers, in the satire "English Bards," etc. Restless and misanthropic, satiated with the dissolute gaieties of London, embarrassed, besides, in circumstances (for, independently of his own extravagance, his grand-uncle had done what he could to dilapidate his successor's heritage), Byron in 1809 resolved to travel. He visited, accompanied by his friend Mr. Hobhouse, Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Asia Minor. He returned in 1811 to receive his mother's last sigh. The next three years were signalized by the appearance in rapid succession of the first two cantos of "Childe Harold," "The Giaour,' "The Bride of Abydos," ," "The Corsair," and "Lara." His reputation was now at its height; he was the idol of English society, but the blaze of fame conferred no happiness; embarrassed in circumstances, with a home without a tie of affection, he determined to marry. The lady he selected for his bride was Miss Milbanke, daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke, a Northumberland baronet. This marriage was peculiarly unfortunate: after the birth of a daughter, Ada (who died Countess of Lovelace in 1852), Lady Byron left her husband, and, by the advice of her relatives, refused to return, the alleged cause being a conviction of Lord Byron's insanity. When the desertion took place, the poet's affairs were in ruins; repeated executions had happened in his house. Whatever or wherever may have been the fault, his nature was rent by the deepest grief and anger. England was no longer the place for his desolate spirit, and he again sought refuge for his misery in foreign travel (1816). Bearing the outward mask of pride, indifference, and gaiety, he traversed Belgium, Switzerland (where he formed the acquaintance of Shelley), and resided for a number of years in various parts of Italy, chiefly at Venice. His time seems to have been passed in a series of heartless libertine intrigues and dissipation, intermixed with literary labour. But a better sphere was opening up for the exertion of his energies. The Greek insurrection commenced in 1821, and roused the sympathies of all Europe. Ardently interested in the cause of a country whose classic shores have been a second time celebrated by his muse, he generously determined to devote himself and his fortune to her liberties. He was received by the nation with unbounded enthusiasm ; but, ere he could enjoy the opportunity of redeeming his past life, by a career worthy of his great qualities, he was cut off by a fever, and died at Missolonghi in 1824, at the early age of thirty-seven. His death was mourned by the Greeks as a national calamity. His body was brought to England, and would have been interred in Westminster Abbey, "where the dead are honoured by the nations," but the Dean and Chapter refused their consent, and the poet's remains repose with those of his ancestors in the small village church of Hucknall, near Newstead. 1 Of this poem Byron boasts that 14,000 copies were sold in one day. The poet had started with the generous determination to accept no money for his works, but to dispose of their copyrights in gifts to his friends. This resolution his prudence and his necessities soon induced him to abandon. The sums he received for his poems amounted, according to the statement of Mr. Murray his publisher, to upwards of £15,000. 2 See the expression of his feeling in the verses "Fare thee well," etc., and in the "Sketch," a waste of indignation and satire wholly misdirected. The poet himself professed ignorance of any real cause of the separation, and Lady Byron always preserved silence on the subject. This excellent lady, remarkable for her benevolence, died in 1859. |