Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 1 - With His Letters and Journals

Thomas Moore

Informations

• Publié par: adde
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 44
• Langue: English

Extrait

Project Gutenberg's Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.), by Thomas Moore
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.)
With his Letters and Journals.
Author: Thomas Moore
Release Date: February 6, 2006 [EBook #17684]
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF LORD BYRON, VOL. I. ***
Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Sankar Viswanathan, and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Transcriber's Note:
This is the first volume of the Six volume series
Life of Lord Byron
with his Letters and Journals
by
Thomas Moore.
Links to the other five volumes.
Volume Two. E-Text No.16570
Volume Three. E-Text No.16548
Volume Four. E-Text No.16549
Volume Five. E-Text No.16609
Volume Six. E-Text No.14841 LIFE
OF
LORD BYRON:
WITH HIS LETTERS AND JOURNALS.

BY THOMAS MOORE, ESQ.

IN SIX VOLUMES.—VOL. I.


LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1854.



CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, with Notices
of his Life, to the Period of His Return from the
Continent, July, 1811.
TO
SIR WALTER SCOTT, BARONET,
THESE VOLUMES
ARE INSCRIBED
BY HIS AFFECTIONATE FRIEND,
THOMAS MOORE.
December, 1829.
[ix]
PREFACE
TO THE
FIRST VOLUME OF THE FIRST EDITION.[1]
In presenting these Volumes to the public I should have felt, I own,
considerable diffidence, from a sincere distrust in my own powers of doing
justice to such a task, were I not well convinced that there is in the subject itself,and in the rich variety of materials here brought to illustrate it, a degree of
attraction and interest which it would be difficult, even for hands the most
unskilful, to extinguish. However lamentable were the circumstances under
which Lord Byron became estranged from his country, to his long absence from
England, during the most brilliant period of his powers, we are indebted for all
those interesting letters which compose the greater part of the Second Volume
of this work, and which will be found equal, if not superior, in point of vigour,
variety, and liveliness, to any that have yet adorned this branch of our literature.
[x]
What has been said of Petrarch, that "his correspondence and verses together
afford the progressive interest of a narrative in which the poet is always
identified with the man," will be found applicable, in a far greater degree, to
Lord Byron, in whom the literary and the personal character were so closely
interwoven, that to have left his works without the instructive commentary which
his Life and Correspondence afford, would have been equally an injustice both
to himself and to the world.
[xi]
PREFACE
TO THE
SECOND VOLUME OF THE FIRST EDITION.
The favourable reception which I ventured to anticipate for the First Volume of
this work has been, to the full extent of my expectations, realised; and I may
without scruple thus advert to the success it has met with, being well aware that
to the interest of the subject and the materials, not to any merit of the editor,
such a result is to be attributed. Among the less agreeable, though not least
valid, proofs of this success may be counted the attacks which, from more than
one quarter, the Volume has provoked;—attacks angry enough, it must be
confessed, but, from their very anger, impotent, and, as containing nothing
whatever in the shape either of argument or fact, not entitled, I may be
pardoned for saying, to the slightest notice.
Of a very different description, both as regards the respectability of the source
[xii]from whence it comes, and the mysterious interest involved in its contents, is a
document which made its appearance soon after the former Volume,[2] and
which I have annexed, without a single line of comment, to the present;—
contenting myself, on this painful subject, with entreating the reader's attention
to some extracts, as beautiful as they are, to my mind, convincing, from an
unpublished pamphlet of Lord Byron, which will be found in the following
pages.[3]
Sanguinely as I was led to augur of the reception of our First Volume, of the
success of that which we now present to the public, I am disposed to feel even
still more confident. Though self-banished from England, it was plain that to
England alone Lord Byron continued to look, throughout the remainder of his
days, not only as the natural theatre of his literary fame, but as the tribunal to
which all his thoughts, feelings, virtues, and frailties were to be referred; and the
exclamation of Alexander, "Oh, Athenians, how much it costs me to obtain your
praises!" might have been, with equal truth, addressed by the noble exile to his
countrymen. To keep the minds of the English public for ever occupied about
[xiii]him,—if not with his merits, with his faults; if not in applauding, in blaming him,
—was, day and night, the constant ambition of his soul; and in the
correspondence he so regularly maintained with his publisher, one of the chief
mediums through which this object was to be effected lay. Mr. Murray's housebeing then, as now, the resort of most of those literary men who are, at the
same time, men of the world, his Lordship knew that whatever particulars he
might wish to make public concerning himself, would, if transmitted to that
quarter, be sure to circulate from thence throughout society. It was on this
presumption that he but rarely, as we shall find him more than once stating,
corresponded with any others of his friends at home; and to the mere accident
of my having been, myself, away from England, at the time, was I indebted for
the numerous and no less interesting letters with which, during the same
period, he honoured me, and which now enrich this volume.
In these two sets of correspondence (given, as they are here, with as little
suppression as a regard to private feelings and to certain other considerations,
warrants) will be found a complete history, from the pen of the poet himself, of
the course of his life and thoughts, during this most energetic period of his
whole career;—presenting altogether so wide a canvass of animated and,
[xiv]often, unconscious self-portraiture, as even the communicative spirit of genius
has seldom, if ever, before bestowed on the world.
Some insinuations, calling into question the disinterestedness of the lady
whose fate was connected with that of Lord Byron during his latter years,
having been brought forward, or rather revived, in a late work, entitled "Galt's
Life of Byron,"—a work wholly unworthy of the respectable name it bears,—I
may be allowed to adduce here a testimony on this subject, which has been
omitted in its proper place,[4] but which will be more than sufficient to set the
idle calumny at rest. The circumstance here alluded to may be most clearly,
perhaps, communicated to my readers through the medium of the following
extract from a letter, which Mr. Barry (the friend and banker of Lord Byron) did
me the favour of addressing to me soon after his Lordship's death[5]:—"When
Lord Byron went to Greece, he gave me orders to advance money to Madame
G——; but that lady would never consent to receive any. His Lordship had also
told me that he meant to leave his will in my hands, and that there would be a
bequest in it of 10,000 l. to Madame G——. He mentioned this circumstance
[xv]also to Lord Blessington. When the melancholy news of his death reached me,
I took for granted that this will would be found among the sealed papers he had
left with me; but there was no such instrument. I immediately then wrote to
Madame G——, enquiring if she knew any thing concerning it, and mentioning,
at the same time, what his Lordship had said as to the legacy. To this the lady
replied, that he had frequently spoken to her on the same subject, but that she
had always cut the conversation short, as it was a topic she by no means liked
to hear him speak upon. In addition, she expressed a wish that no such will as I
had mentioned would be found; as her circumstances were already sufficiently
independent, and the world might put a wrong construction on her attachment,
should it appear that her fortunes were, in any degree, bettered by it."
[1]NOTICES
OF THE
LIFE OF LORD BYRON.
It has been said of Lord Byron, "that he was prouder of being a descendant of
those Byrons of Normandy, who accompanied William the Conqueror into
England, than of having been the author of Childe Harold and Manfred." This
remark is not altogether unfounded in truth. In the character of the noble poet,
the pride of ancestry was undoubtedly one of the most decided features; and,as far as antiquity alone gives lustre to descent, he had every reason to boast of
the claims of his race. In Doomsday-book, the name of Ralph de Burun ranks
high among the tenants of land in Nottinghamshire; and in the succeeding
reigns, under the title of Lords of Horestan Cas