Quotes by George Gordon Byron

Byron was, perhaps, a more willing guest at literary entertainments than he professed to be. "I met him," says Sir Walter Scott (_Memoirs of the Life, etc._, 1838, ii. 167), "frequently in society.... Some very agreeable parties I can recollect, particularly one at Sir George Beaumont's, where the amiable landlord had assembled some persons distinguished for talent. Of these I need only mention the late Sir Humphry Davy.... Mr. Richard Sharpe and Mr. Rogers were also present." Again, Miss Berry, in her _Journal_ (1866, in. 49) records, May 8, 1815, that "Lord and Lady Byron persuaded me to go with them to Miss [Lydia] White (_vide post_, p. 587). Never have I seen a more imposing convocation of ladies arranged in a circle than when we entered ... Lord Byron brought me home. He stayed to supper." If he did not affect "your blue-bottles," he was on intimate terms with Madame de Staël, "the _Begum_ of Literature," as Moore called her; with the Contessa d'Albrizzi (the De Staël of Italy); with Mrs. Wilmot, the inspirer of "She walks in beauty like the night;" with Mrs. Shelley; with Lady Blessington. Moreover, to say nothing of his "mathematical wife," who was as "blue as ether," the Countess Guiccioli could not only read and "inwardly digest" _Corinna_ (see letter to Moore, January 2, 1820), but knew the _Divina Commedia_ by heart, and was a critic as well as an inspirer of her lover's poetry. If it is difficult to assign a reason or occasion for the composition of _The Blues_, it is a harder, perhaps an impossible, task to identify all the _dramatis personæ_. Botherby, Lady Bluemount, and Miss Diddle are, obviously, Sotheby, Lady Beaumont, and Lydia White. Scamp the Lecturer may be Hazlitt, who had incurred Byron's displeasure by commenting on his various and varying estimates of Napoleon (see _Lectures on the English Poets_, 1818, p. 304, and _Don Juan_, Canto 1. stanza ii. line 7, note to Buonaparte). Inkel seems to be meant for Byron himself, and Tracy, a friend, _not_ a Lake poet, for Moore. Sir Richard and Lady Bluebottle may possibly symbolize Lord and Lady Holland; and Miss Lilac is, certainly, Miss Milbanke, the "Annabella" of Byron's courtship, not the "moral Clytemnestra" of his marriage and separation.

If I sneer sometimes, It is because I cannot well do less, And now and then it also suits my rhymes. I should be very willing to redress Men’s wrongs, and rather check than punish crimes, Had not Cervantes, in that too true tale Of Quixote, shown how all such efforts fail. Of all tales ’tis the saddest—and more sad, Because it makes us smile: his hero ’s right, And still pursues the right;—to curb the bad His only object, and ’gainst odds to fight His guerdon: ’tis his virtue makes him mad! But his adventures form a sorry sight; A sorrier still is the great moral taught By that real epic unto all who have thought. Redressing injury, revenging wrong, To aid the damsel and destroy the caitiff; Opposing singly the united strong, From foreign yoke to free the helpless native:— Alas! must noblest views, like an old song, Be for mere fancy’s sport a theme creative, A jest, a riddle, Fame through thin and thick sought! And Socrates himself but Wisdom’s Quixote? Cervantes smiled Spain’s chivalry away; A single laugh demolish’d the right arm Of his own country;—seldom since that day Has Spain had heroes. While Romance could charm, The world gave ground before her bright array; And therefore have his volumes done such harm, That all their glory, as a composition, Was dearly purchased by his land’s perdition. I’m ‘at my old lunes’—digression, and forget The Lady Adeline Amundeville; The fair most fatal Juan ever met, Although she was not evil nor meant ill; But Destiny and Passion spread the net (Fate is a good excuse for our own will), And caught them;—what do they not catch, methinks? But I’m not OEdipus, and life ’s a Sphinx. I tell the tale as it is told, nor dare To venture a solution: ‘Davus sum!’ And now I will proceed upon the pair. Sweet Adeline, amidst the gay world’s hum, Was the Queen-Bee, the glass of all that ’s fair; Whose charms made all men speak, and women dumb. The last ’s a miracle, and such was reckon’d, And since that time there has not been a second. Chaste was she, to detraction’s desperation, And wedded unto one she had loved well— A man known in the councils of the nation, Cool, and quite English, imperturbable, Though apt to act with fire upon occasion, Proud of himself and her: the world could tell Nought against either, and both seem’d secure— She in her virtue, he in his hauteur.

My pilgrim's shrine is won, And he and I must part,--so let it be,-- His task and mine alike are nearly done; Yet once more let us look upon the sea: The midland ocean breaks on him and me, And from the Alban mount we now behold Our friend of youth, that ocean, which when we Beheld it last by Calpe's rock unfold Those waves, we followed on till the dark Euxine rolled CLXXVI. Upon the blue Symplegades: long years-- Long, though not very many--since have done Their work on both; some suffering and some tears Have left us nearly where we had begun: Yet not in vain our mortal race hath run, We have had our reward--and it is here; That we can yet feel gladdened by the sun, And reap from earth, sea, joy almost as dear As if there were no man to trouble what is clear. CLXXVII. Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place, With one fair Spirit for my minister, That I might all forget the human race, And, hating no one, love but only her! Ye Elements!--in whose ennobling stir I feel myself exalted--can ye not Accord me such a being? Do I err In deeming such inhabit many a spot? Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot. CLXXVIII. There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its roar: I love not Man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the Universe, and feel What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal. CLXXIX. Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean--roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; Man marks the earth with ruin--his control Stops with the shore;--upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, When for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown. CLXXX. His steps are not upon thy paths,--thy fields Are not a spoil for him,--thou dost arise And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray And howling, to his gods, where haply lies His petty hope in some near port or bay, And dashest him again to earth:--there let him lay.

Were it not thus, it had never been composed; and had I not done something at that time, I must have gone mad, by eating my own heart,--bitter diet;--Hodgson likes it better than "_The Giaour_" but nobody else will,--and he never liked the Fragment. I am sure, had it not been for Murray, _that_ would never have been published, though the circumstances which are the ground-work make it----heigh-ho! To-night I saw both the sisters of----; my God! the youngest so like! I thought I should have sprung across the house, and am so glad no one was with me in Lady H.'s box. I hate those likenesses--the mock-bird, but not the nightingale--so like as to remind, so different as to be painful [3]. One quarrels equally with the points of resemblance and of distinction. [Footnote 1: 'Antony and Cleopatra' was revived at Covent Garden, November 15, 1813, with additions from Dryden's 'All for Love, or the World Well Lost'(1678). "Cleopatra" was acted by Mrs. Fawcit; "Marc Antony" by Young. (See for the allusions, act v. se. 2, and act i. sc. 3.)] [Footnote 2: "But words are things; and a small drop of ink, Falling, like dew, upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think." 'Don Juan', Canto III. stanza lxxxviii.] [Footnote 3: "-----my weal, my woe, My hope on high--my all below; Earth holds no other like to thee, Or, if it doth, in vain for me: For worlds I dare not view the dame Resembling thee, yet not the same." 'The Giaour'.] * * * * * Nov. 17. No letter from----; but I must not complain. The respectable Job says, "Why should a _living man_ complain?" [1] I really don't know, except it be that a _dead man_ can't; and he, the said patriarch, _did_ complain, nevertheless, till his friends were tired and his wife recommended that pious prologue,"Curse--and die;" the only time, I suppose, when but little relief is to be found in swearing. I have had a most kind letter from Lord Holland on "_The Bride of Abydos_," which he likes, and so does Lady H. This is very good-natured in both, from whom I don't deserve any quarter. Yet I _did_ think, at the time, that my cause of enmity proceeded from Holland House, and am glad I was wrong, and wish I had not been in such a hurry with that confounded satire, of which I would suppress even the memory;--but people, now they can't get it, make a fuss, I verily believe, out of contradiction.

or, if they can, the few And gifted spirits, who have studied long That loathsome volume--man, and pored upon Those black and bloody leaves, his heart and brain,[bf] But learn a magic which recoils upon The adept who pursues it: all the sins We find in others, Nature made our own; All our advantages are those of Fortune; 340 Birth, wealth, health, beauty, are her accidents, And when we cry out against Fate, 'twere well We should remember Fortune can take nought Save what she _gave_--the rest was nakedness, And lusts, and appetites, and vanities, The universal heritage, to battle With as we may, and least in humblest stations,[bg] Where Hunger swallows all in one low want,[bh] And the original ordinance, that man Must sweat for his poor pittance, keeps all passions 350 Aloof, save fear of famine! All is low, And false, and hollow--clay from first to last, The Prince's urn no less than potter's vessel. Our Fame is in men's breath, our lives upon Less than their breath; our durance upon days[bi] Our days on seasons; our whole being on Something which is not _us_![56]--So, we are slaves, The greatest as the meanest--nothing rests Upon our will; the will itself no less[bj] Depends upon a straw than on a storm; 360 And when we think we lead, we are most led,[57] And still towards Death, a thing which comes as much Without our act or choice as birth, so that Methinks we must have sinned in some old world, And _this_ is Hell: the best is, that it is not Eternal. _Mar._ These are things we cannot judge On earth. _Doge_. And how then shall we judge each other, Who are all earth, and I, who am called upon To judge my son? I have administered My country faithfully--victoriously-- 370 I dare them to the proof, the _chart_ of what She was and is: my reign has doubled realms; And, in reward, the gratitude of Venice Has left, or is about to leave, _me_ single. _Mar._ And Foscari? I do not think of such things, So I be left with him. _Doge_. You shall be so; Thus much they cannot well deny. _Mar._ And if They should, I will fly with him. _Doge_. That can ne'er be.

(Signs of true genius, and of empty pockets.) One makes new noses, one a guillotine, One breaks your bones, one sets them in their sockets; But vaccination certainly has been A kind antithesis to Congreve’s rockets, With which the Doctor paid off an old pox, By borrowing a new one from an ox. Bread has been made (indifferent) from potatoes; And galvanism has set some corpses grinning, But has not answer’d like the apparatus Of the Humane Society’s beginning By which men are unsuffocated gratis: What wondrous new machines have late been spinning! I said the small-pox has gone out of late; Perhaps it may be follow’d by the great. ’Tis said the great came from America; Perhaps it may set out on its return,— The population there so spreads, they say ’Tis grown high time to thin it in its turn, With war, or plague, or famine, any way, So that civilisation they may learn; And which in ravage the more loathsome evil is— Their real lues, or our pseudo-syphilis? This is the patent-age of new inventions For killing bodies, and for saving souls, All propagated with the best intentions; Sir Humphry Davy’s lantern, by which coals Are safely mined for in the mode he mentions, Tombuctoo travels, voyages to the Poles, Are ways to benefit mankind, as true, Perhaps, as shooting them at Waterloo. Man ’s a phenomenon, one knows not what, And wonderful beyond all wondrous measure; ’Tis pity though, in this sublime world, that Pleasure ’s a sin, and sometimes sin ’s a pleasure; Few mortals know what end they would be at, But whether glory, power, or love, or treasure, The path is through perplexing ways, and when The goal is gain’d, we die, you know—and then— What then?—I do not know, no more do you— And so good night.—Return we to our story: ’Twas in November, when fine days are few, And the far mountains wax a little hoary, And clap a white cape on their mantles blue; And the sea dashes round the promontory, And the loud breaker boils against the rock, And sober suns must set at five o’clock. ’Twas, as the watchmen say, a cloudy night; No moon, no stars, the wind was low or loud By gusts, and many a sparkling hearth was bright With the piled wood, round which the family crowd; There’s something cheerful in that sort of light, Even as a summer sky ’s without a cloud: I’m fond of fire, and crickets, and all that, A lobster salad, and champagne, and chat.

Whether they rode, or walk’d, or studied Spanish To read Don Quixote in the original, A pleasure before which all others vanish; Whether their talk was of the kind call’d ‘small,’ Or serious, are the topics I must banish To the next Canto; where perhaps I shall Say something to the purpose, and display Considerable talent in my way. Above all, I beg all men to forbear Anticipating aught about the matter: They’ll only make mistakes about the fair, And Juan too, especially the latter. And I shall take a much more serious air Than I have yet done, in this epic satire. It is not clear that Adeline and Juan Will fall; but if they do, ’twill be their ruin. But great things spring from little:—Would you think, That in our youth, as dangerous a passion As e’er brought man and woman to the brink Of ruin, rose from such a slight occasion, As few would ever dream could form the link Of such a sentimental situation? You’ll never guess, I’ll bet you millions, milliards— It all sprung from a harmless game at billiards. ’Tis strange,—but true; for truth is always strange; Stranger than fiction; if it could be told, How much would novels gain by the exchange! How differently the world would men behold! How oft would vice and virtue places change! The new world would be nothing to the old, If some Columbus of the moral seas Would show mankind their souls’ antipodes. What ‘antres vast and deserts idle’ then Would be discover’d in the human soul! What icebergs in the hearts of mighty men, With self-love in the centre as their pole! What Anthropophagi are nine of ten Of those who hold the kingdoms in control Were things but only call’d by their right name, Caesar himself would be ashamed of fame. CANTO THE FIFTEENTH. Ah!—What should follow slips from my reflection; Whatever follows ne’ertheless may be As _à propos_ of hope or retrospection, As though the lurking thought had follow’d free. All present life is but an interjection, An ‘Oh!’ or ‘Ah!’ of joy or misery, Or a ‘Ha! ha!’ or ‘Bah!’—a yawn, or ‘Pooh!’ Of which perhaps the latter is most true. But, more or less, the whole ’s a syncope Or a singultus—emblems of emotion, The grand antithesis to great ennui, Wherewith we break our bubbles on the ocean,— That watery outline of eternity, Or miniature at least, as is my notion, Which ministers unto the soul’s delight, In seeing matters which are out of sight.

However this might be, the race went on Improving still through every generation, Until it centred in an only son, Who left an only daughter; my narration May have suggested that this single one Could be but Julia (whom on this occasion I shall have much to speak about), and she Was married, charming, chaste, and twenty-three. Her eye (I’m very fond of handsome eyes) Was large and dark, suppressing half its fire Until she spoke, then through its soft disguise Flash’d an expression more of pride than ire, And love than either; and there would arise A something in them which was not desire, But would have been, perhaps, but for the soul Which struggled through and chasten’d down the whole. Her glossy hair was cluster’d o’er a brow Bright with intelligence, and fair, and smooth; Her eyebrow’s shape was like th’ aerial bow, Her cheek all purple with the beam of youth, Mounting at times to a transparent glow, As if her veins ran lightning; she, in sooth, Possess’d an air and grace by no means common: Her stature tall—I hate a dumpy woman. Wedded she was some years, and to a man Of fifty, and such husbands are in plenty; And yet, I think, instead of such a ONE ’Twere better to have TWO of five-and-twenty, Especially in countries near the sun: And now I think on ’t, ‘mi vien in mente,’ Ladies even of the most uneasy virtue Prefer a spouse whose age is short of thirty. ’Tis a sad thing, I cannot choose but say, And all the fault of that indecent sun, Who cannot leave alone our helpless clay, But will keep baking, broiling, burning on, That howsoever people fast and pray, The flesh is frail, and so the soul undone: What men call gallantry, and gods adultery, Is much more common where the climate ’s sultry. Happy the nations of the moral North! Where all is virtue, and the winter season Sends sin, without a rag on, shivering forth (’Twas snow that brought St. Anthony to reason); Where juries cast up what a wife is worth, By laying whate’er sum in mulct they please on The lover, who must pay a handsome price, Because it is a marketable vice. Alfonso was the name of Julia’s lord, A man well looking for his years, and who Was neither much beloved nor yet abhorr’d: They lived together, as most people do, Suffering each other’s foibles by accord, And not exactly either one or two; Yet he was jealous, though he did not show it, For jealousy dislikes the world to know it.