From the “Life of Byron and Other Sketches.”

THE GENIUS and beauty of Byron were fatal gifts for himself. These endowments, which would have been for other men a continual source of happiness, were for him but the cause of constant sorrow. He compared himself to his grandfather, who, being a great traveler, never embarked without seeing the elements unchained and being exposed to the fury of a tempest; so Byron never gained a heart without afflicting it and himself. All the sweetness of his rich fancy turned to bitterness at the presence of reality. Aloes were mingled in his cup, and there was a sort of fatality in his life, so that his affections seemed less to comfort than to wither their object. He was like one of those Greek heroes—youthful, resplendent, as skillful with the sword as with the lyre—beloved by a beautiful woman, conqueror alike in sports as in battles; and yet condemned from the cradle by a cruel destiny to the infernal deities. Against this tragic fatality of his existence there was but one remedy; to renounce a life of adventure, and to enter into the conditions of domestic life; to make for himself a home sheltered from the tempest of passion—to unite himself to a woman whom he should love tenderly and tranquilly, with that serene, calm affection under whose wings alone marriage can be happy….

  Without doubt, this idea of marriage was one which, had it been successfully carried out, would have saved Lord Byron. He arrived at it from a thoughtful study of his past life, and from the imperious promptings of his conscience. At last he found the woman to whom he was to resign his destiny. The only daughter of a distinguished family, educated with Puritanic strictness, learned in metaphysics and in mathematics, cold in temperament, proud of her aristocratic name and of her lofty virtues, encompassed by English customs and the social laws of her time.

  Lady Byron had little capacity to govern, and much to be governed. Her regular life and habits openly clashed with the irregularities of her husband. She was offended if he was not present at the solemn hour of tea; she was in despair because he did not eat after the English fashion; she kept the books and the library under lock and key; she could not endure his being awake while she slept, nor that he should sleep while she was waking. The light reflected from his eyes when possessed by inspiration terrified her like the glance of a tiger. The incoherent words which issued from his lips in the hours in which he composed his poems filled her with the impression that he was insane. The different political opinions held by them as to the future of human society widened the gulf between them. The contempt which Lord Byron expressed for British etiquette appeared to the education and temperament of his wife little short of sacrilege. His blunt saying in the midst of such formality shocked and irritated her. She calculated all her words and actions, and he improvised his own; she was an advanced scholar in mathematics; he was a great master of poetry—and naturally the two could not harmonize. Her virtue, severe but cold, could not consent to the moral disorder nor to the immoral actions described by the poet. She felt she had fallen from the unalterable serenity and dignity of her existence into chaos. Her terror went so far that she consulted lawyers and doctors, instructing them to put searching questions to her husband, in order to be enabled to confine him to a lunatic asylum, though he deserved an Olympus. Her natural reserve and his natural frankness were the occasion of continual jarring. Some of the later adventures of Byron, which passed like shadows across her horizon, drove her to desperation. At last, feeling herself about to become a mother, and cruelly choosing that moment of hope and love—that period in which life has some value and some definite purpose, in which the heart expands with an unknown and pure affection, in which a woman becomes the sanctuary of a new existence—she chose that time of transfiguration to contrive her criminal project of abandoning her husband!

  She gave birth to a daughter, and was scarcely recovered when she expressed a wish to visit her parents. Lord Byron consented; and when she had arrived at her father’s house she wrote him a letter to say that her departure was a flight and not a visit, and that they were separated forever before God and men.

  It is not possible to express the indignation with which England regarded her illustrious son. History has no example of similar anger. All the reputations he had wounded, all the jealousies he had sown with his genius, all the old customs he had scorched and ridiculed with his satire, all the privileges he had combated with his eloquence—the Protestant clergy, the British aristocracy, private society, literary men, the ministers, the court, the people, so easily deceived; in fine, all English prejudices arose against Lord Byron like so many vipers. The doors of all classes of society were closed against him. The hands which had woven him crowns now recoil from his touch, as if fearing to be burned with some poison. The street boys flung mud upon him. In the theatres he was hissed. The most obscene libels attributed to him most shameful vices. The daily papers represented him with horrible caricature. Fathers hid their daughters from his basilisk glances. Women, so jealous of the prerogatives of their sex, were dismayed on seeing such a monster. To the eyes of society he was a devil illumined with genius, the better to show he had neither heart nor conscience. For these troubles there was but one remedy; after having lost his home, he lost his country; he fled, an exile without glory, a martyr without his crown, unhappy among the most miserable—a fallen angel, covered with the mire of London streets, flung upon his sculptured brow by a people intoxicated with hatred.

  Poet! mighty poet! men know not the impossibility of having grand qualities without having also great defects. They know not that all extraordinary virtue, all surpassing merit, is born of a disproportion between human faculties. They know not that the perfect sense of hearing has a relation with the imperfect sense of vision; and at times, the perfection of imagination with the imperfection of conscience. They do not reflect that as the organs of animals are proportioned to their destiny in creation, so the faculties of giant minds are proportioned to their destiny in history. Demand of the Creator why the eagle sings not like the nightingale. Ask him why the horse has not the strength of the bull. Let us not desire to discover too closely the physical fatalities which surround us, and which trouble us within and without our organism. Talent is in the soul, but it throws its influence on the body. All supernatural genius is an internal infirmity. The singing which enchants us, the melody which transports us to the world of dreams, has often been the consequence of an aneurism; the poem which inspires us with lofty ideas, great aspirations, has been written with bile; that wondrous work which leaves an indelible track in history devours and destroys an organism; that discourse which awakens a generation to new ideas is but a nervous crisis; that powerful intellect, able to weigh the stars, and to trace as on a map the limits of human reason, is for the body weakness and sterility; and all genius is a mortal infirmity.

  Believe not in the impassibility of great men like Goethe and Rossini; believe not that with Olympian indifference they could pass from the torments of life to the heaven of immortality, as if in this world they were of marble instead of the flesh which burns the bones, and of the blood which is mingled with fire. Genius is a divine infirmity; genius is a martyrdom. The poet seizes upon the light, the stars, the mountains, the seas, to convert them into ideas, into canticles. The poet dissolves the universe to mingle the colors for his pictures. But he cannot undertake the Titanic work without insuring his own destruction. He cannot go into the fire without being burned; he cannot mount to the extreme heights of the atmosphere without being frozen; he cannot enter the thundercloud without receiving in that conductor, his body, the shock of electricity. Those privileged souls which, flinging off the clay of this world, force their way upward till they become like bright stars in the firmament, almost approaching the angels; those beings—who from the rock of their own shipwreck hold forth the light to future generations—have fed the divine splendor burning in the lamp of their own brain with tears from their eyes and with blood from their hearts!