Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/810

780 The only consolation was, that the cases were not isolated. Nearly everyone's story was alike. A boy first commenced being Byronic by falling in love with a woman a dozen years older than himself. She, of course, laughed at his passion, and married somebody else. This afforded a very strong foundation for being sere, and lone, and blighted. No tasks could be studied, of course. The classics were monstrous. If preceptors complained, a quotation from Childe Harold about the "dull lesson forc'd down at school," was always ready. Life had no object but poetry. Vacations were spent in dissipation. When college days were over forever, commerce or merchandising was not to be thought of Professions were likewise objectionable, because Conrad in a lawyer's gown and wig, or the Wanderer administering physic, could not seem otherwise than somewhat odd. So a young man must go on a Voyage. Then came the Farewell to England; then a great deal of money and time wasted in doing the Continent, by drinking and debauchery; then the return home; then the publication of a feeble Romaunt; then disappointment because nobody took any notice of it; and then, when all the money had been spent, and the parents' hearts broken, the thing of dark imaginings died, was talked about a day or two as a foolish fellow, and was forgotten. This is not an exaggeration. It is the history of many young gentlemen of Britain, who, but for their folly, had made good and honorable citizens. Of course, it was not the case invariably. Many were stricken with the fever, upon whom it lasted only a short while, and they gave it up when something occurred to divert their thoughts into another channel. So the mania was pernicious. It caused an exceedingly large number of suicides. Zimmerman, in his famous work on Solitude, says, "when melancholy seizes to a certain extent, the mind of an Englishman, it almost uniformly leads him to put a period to his existence; while the worst effect it has on a Frenchman is to induce him to turn Carthusian." His assertion was well demonstrated in 1824 and the years that followed, for by reference to various prints published at that time, it will be discovered that an astonishing number of persons who became Byronic, lost their wits entirely and committed self-murder. The great cause for regret, is that none of those who were troubled with the malady, had sufficient sense to understand that the only reason people were interested in Lord Byron was that he was a man of most splendid genius. Without that, his follies would have excited scarcely any remark. It was because the world saw his mind withering with his body, that he was pitied. But his followers imagined that his vices alone made him an object of concern, and they embraced them with far more ardor, in many instances, than ever he did. It was deplorable, but, as already remarked, it was at the same time ridiculous.

If people had believed in Mr. Leigh Hunt's book a little more implicity than in Mr. Moore's, there would have been much less reason for sorrow than there was. I do not pretend for a moment to say that it was all fair and just. Still, it could claim more credit for those requisites in a book that pretends to be a faithful history of a man's life or of any portion of it, than could that of the writer of the Melodies. Perhaps it was wrong, insomuch as it did not follow the old nil nisi maxim, and made unpleasant and culpable misrepresentations about certain pecuniary matters. Yet it aided the calm and dispassionate in finding out the real character of Lord Byron, and in discovering, as Mr. Frederick Dorrit might say, how much nonsense he had about him. That its effect would have been in some way really good, if people had not been senseless with enthusiasm and not to be brought to look upon it as anything else than what Mr. Fitz