My Recollections of Lord Byron Part 22

O'er roses may your footsteps move, Your smiles be ever smiles of love, Your tears be tears of joy!

Oh! if you wish that happiness Your coming days and years may bless, And virtues crown your brow; Be still, as you were wont to be, Spotless as you've been known to me,-- Be still as you are now.

And though some trifling share of praise, To cheer my last declining days, To me were doubly dear, While blessing your beloved name, I'd waive at once a _poet's_ fame, To prove a _prophet_ here.

In 1821, as he was going to Pisa, Byron met his old and dear friend Clare on the route to Bologna, and speaks of their meeting in the following terms:--

"'There is a strange coincidence sometimes in the little things of this world, Sancho,' says Sterne, in a letter (if I mistake not), and so I have often found it. At page 128, article 91, of this collection, I had alluded to my friend Lord Clare in terms such as my feelings suggested.

About a week or two afterward I met him on the road between Imola and Bologna, after an interval of seven or eight years. He was abroad in 1814, and came home just as I set out in 1816.

"This meeting annihilated for a moment all the years between the present time and the days of Harrow. It was a new and inexplicable feeling, like rising from the grave, to me. Clare, too, was much agitated--more in appearance than I was myself; for I could feel his heart beat to his fingers' ends, unless, indeed, it was the pulse of my own which made me think so. He told me, that I should find a note from him left at Bologna. I did. We were obliged to part for our different journeys--he for Rome, I for Pisa--but with the promise to meet again in the spring.

We were but five minutes together, and on the public road; but I hardly recollect an hour of my existence which could be weighed against those few minutes.... Of all I have ever known he has always been the least altered in every thing from the excellent qualities and kind affections which attached me to him so strongly at school. I should hardly have thought it possible for society to leave a being with so little of the leaven of bad pa.s.sions.

"I do not speak from personal experience only, but from all I have ever heard of him from others during absence and distance."

"My greatest friend, Lord Clare, is at Rome," he wrote to Moore from Pisa, in March, 1822: "we met on the road, and our meeting was quite sentimental--really pathetic on both sides. I have always loved him better than any male thing in the world."

In June Lord Clare came to visit Byron, and on the 8th of that month Byron wrote to Moore:--

"A few days ago my earliest and dearest friend, Lord Clare, came over from Geneva on purpose to see me before he returned to England. As I have always loved him, since I was thirteen at Harrow, better than any male thing in the world, I need hardly say what a melancholy pleasure it was to see him for a day only; for he was obliged to resume his journey immediately."

On another occasion he told Medwin that there is no pleasure in existence like that of meeting an early friend.

"Lord Clare's visit," says Madame G----, "gave Byron the greatest joy.

The last day they spent together at Leghorn was most melancholy. Byron had a kind of presentiment that he should never see his friend again, and in speaking of him, for a long time after, his eyes always filled with tears."

LONG (CLEON).

Edward Long was with Lord Byron at Harrow and at Cambridge. He entered the Guards, and distinguished himself in the expedition to Copenhagen.

As he was on his way to join the army in the Peninsula, in 1809, the s.h.i.+p in which he sailed was run down by another vessel, and Long was drowned with several others.

Long's friends.h.i.+p contributed to render Byron's stay at Cambridge bearable after his beloved Harrow days.

"Long," says Lord Byron, "was one of those good and amiable creatures who live but a short time. He had talents and qualities far too rare not to make him very much regretted." He depicts him as a lively companion, with an occasional strange touch of melancholy. One would have said he antic.i.p.ated, as it were, the fate which awaited him.

The letter which he wrote to Byron, on leaving the University to enter the Guards, was so full of sadness that it contrasted strangely with his habitual humor.

"His manners," says Lord Byron, "were amiable and gentle, and he had a great disposition to look at the comical side of things. He was a musician, and played on several instruments, especially the flute and the violincello. We spent our evenings with music, but I was only a listener. Our princ.i.p.al beverage consisted in soda-water. During the day we rode, swam, walked, and read together; but we only spent one summer with each other."

On his leaving Cambridge, Byron addressed to him the following lines:--

TO EDWARD NOEL LONG, ESQ.

"Nil ego contulerim jocundo sa.n.u.s amico."--HORACE.

Dear Long, in this sequester'd scene, While all around in slumber lie, The joyous days which ours have been Come rolling fresh on Fancy's eye; Thus if amid the gathering storm, While clouds the darken'd noon deform, Yon heaven a.s.sumes a varied glow, I hail the sky's celestial bow, Which spreads the sign of future peace, And bids the war of tempests cease.

Ah! though the present brings but pain, I think those days may come again; Or if, in melancholy mood, Some lurking envious fear intrude, To check my bosom's fondest thought, And interrupt the golden dream, I crush the fiend with malice fraught, And still indulge my wonted theme.

Although we ne'er again can trace In Granta's vale the pedant's lore; Nor through the groves of Ida chase Our raptured visions as before, Though Youth has flown on rosy pinion, And Manhood claims his stern dominion, Age will not every hope destroy, But yield some hours of sober joy.

Yes, I will hope that Time's broad wing Will shed around some dews of spring: But if his scythe must sweep the flowers Which bloom among the fairy bowers, Where smiling youth delights to dwell, And hearts with early rapture swell; If frowning age, with cold control, Confines the current of the soul, Congeals the tear of Pity's eye, Or checks the sympathetic sigh, Or hears unmoved misfortune's groan, And bids me feel for self alone; Oh, may my bosom never learn To soothe its wonted heedless flow, Still, still despise the censor stern, But ne'er forget another's woe.

Yes, as you knew me in the days O'er which Remembrance yet delays, Still may I rove, untutor'd, wild, And even in age at heart a child.

Though now on airy visions borne, To you my soul is still the same.

Oft has it been my fate to mourn, And all my former joys are tame.

But hence! ye hours of sable hue!

Your frowns are gone, my sorrows o'er: By every bliss my childhood knew, I'll think upon your shade no more.

Thus, when the whirlwind's rage is past, And caves their sullen roar inclose, We heed no more the wintry blast, When lull'd by zephyr to repose.

Long's death was the cause of great grief to Lord Byron.

"Long's father," said he, "has written to ask me to write his son's epitaph. I promised to do it, but I never had the strength to finish it."

I will add that Mr. Wathen having gone to visit Lord Byron at Ravenna, and having told him that he knew Long, Byron henceforth treated him with the utmost cordiality. He spoke of Long and of his amiable qualities, until he could no longer hide his tears.

In the month of October, 1805, Lord Byron left Harrow for Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1821 he thus described himself, and his own feelings on leaving his beloved Ida for a new scene of life:--

"When I went to college it was for me a most painful event. I left Harrow against my wish, and so took it to heart, that before I left I never slept for counting the days which I had still to spend there. In the second place, I wished to go to Oxford and not to Cambridge; and, in the third place, I found myself so isolated in this new world, that my mind was perfectly depressed by it.

"Not that my companions were not sociable: quite the contrary; they were particularly lively, hospitable, rich, n.o.ble, and much more gay than myself. I mixed, dined, and supped with them; but, I don't know why, the most painful and galling sensation of life was that of feeling I was no longer a child."

His grief was such that he fell ill, and it was during that illness that he wrote and partly dictated the poem "Recollections of Childhood," in which he mentions and describes all his dear comrades of Harrow, with that particular charm of expression and thought which the heart alone can inspire.

It was again under the same impression that he wrote the most melancholy lines in the "Hours of Idleness," where the regret of the past delightful days of his childhood, spent at his dear Ida, ever comes prominently forward.

"I would I were a careless child,"

he exclaims in one poem, and finishes the same by the lines,--

"Oh that to me the wings were given Which bear the turtle to her nest!

Then would I cleave the vault of Heaven To flee away, and be at rest."

Life at Harrow appears to have been for him then the ideal of happiness.

At times the distant view of the village and college of Harrow, inspires his muse, at others a visit to the college itself, and an hour spent under the shade of an elm in the church-yard. His whole soul is so revealed in these two poems, that I can not forbear quoting them _in extenso_:--

ON A DISTANT VIEW OF THE VILLAGE AND SCHOOL OF HARROW-ON-THE-HILL.

"Oh! mihi praeteritos referat si Jupiter annos."--VIRGIL.

Ye scenes of my childhood, whose loved recollection Embitters the present, compared with the past; Where science first dawn'd on the powers of reflection, And friends.h.i.+ps were form'd, too romantic to last;

Where fancy yet joys to trace the resemblance Of comrades, in friends.h.i.+p and mischief allied, How welcome to me your ne'er-fading remembrance, Which rests in the bosom, though hope is denied!

Again I revisit the hills where we sported, The streams where we swam, and the fields where we fought; The school where, loud warn'd by the bell, we resorted, To pore o'er the precepts by pedagogues taught.

Again I behold where for hours I have ponder'd, As reclining, at eve, on yon tombstone I lay; Or round the steep brow of the church-yard I wander'd, To catch the last gleam of the sun's setting ray.

I once more view the room, with spectators surrounded, Where, as Zanga, I trod on Alonzo o'erthrown; While, to swell my young pride, such applauses resounded, I fancied that Mossop himself was outshown.[24]