The Age Reviewed A Satire: In two parts: Second edition, revised and corrected [by Robert Montgomery] |
 |
|
| I. |
| II. |
 | The Age Reviewed |  |
Her venomed hatred on thine early deeds,—
Thou wert the generous, great, sincere and proud,
High as the eaglet on her misty cloud;
A spirit born with energies sublime,
A heart that softened with increasing time;
In life, luxurious as thy fancy's sway,
In judgment lofty, and in reason gay;—
Whose soul was breathing incense to the Nine,
There worked the moral and the glow divine.
With Elba and Gorgona's isles before;
While flit the curlew screaming round thy head,
Thou bend'st in voiceless sorrow o'er the heap,
Where Keats and Shelley's mingled ashes sleep!
And infant ripples curl upon the lake;
So pensive bosoms by thy muse are stirred,
Till wilder movements rise at every word,
And passions rallying at thy grand controul,
Make every feeling seem a single soul!—
Entranced we trace thee by each path and stone,
Till Harold's pilgrimage becomes our own;
Then on! o'er mountain, rock, and green-waved sea,
Borne with thy thoughts, we pause,—adore with thee!
No towering tomb thou need'st that fane to grace,
Where sleep thy fellow, though less noble race;
Thou liv'st, enchanter, in thy living line,
The best of monuments for fame like thine!
This is not the place to cant about the moral delinquencies of Lord Byron. One thing must ever be regretted, that Lord Byron could allow himself to be connected with a certain blushless gang of blasphemous cockneys—
“------ Worked to the lust of doing ill.”But to balance against his failings, whatever they may be, how many kindling acts are there of generosity, of unostentatious goodness, and genuine philanthropy! One of the creatures whom he so kindly befriended, turned out his anonymous lampooner. The retainer could not eat his pudding, and hold his tongue!
The following interesting, though not well-written description, is taken from “Medwin's Conversations of Lord Byron”— a work that nobody knew how to criticise when it first came out;—“18th of August. On the occasion of Shelley's melancholy fate, I revisited Pisa, and on the day of my arrival learnt that Lord Byron was gone to the sea-shore, to assist in performing the last offices to his friend. We came to a spot marked by an old withered trunk of a fir-tree, and near it on the beach stood a solitary hut covered with reeds. The situation was well calculated for a poet's grave. A few weeks before, I had ridden with him and Lord Byron to this very spot, which I afterwards revisited more than once:—in front was a magnificent extent of the blue and windless Mediterranean, with the isle of Elba and Gorgona. Lord Byron's anchor in the offing;—on the other side, an almost boundless extent of sandy wilderness, uncultivated and uninhabited;—here and there interspersed in tuffs with underwood, curved by the sea-breeze, and stunted by the barren and dry nature of the soil in which it grew. At equal distances along the coast, stood high square towers, for the double purpose of guarding the coast from smuggling, and enforcing the quarantine laws. This view was bounded by an immense extent [how very extensive Mr. M. is!] of the Italian Alps, which are here particularly picturesque, from their volcanic and manifold appearances; which, being composed of white marble, give their summits the resemblance of snow. As a foreground to this picture, appeared an extraordinary group,—Lord Byron and Trelawney were seen standing over the burning pile, with some of the soldiers of the guard; and Leigh Hunt, whose feelings and nerves could not carry him through the scene of horror, [poor fellow! doubtless he was thinking how he should manage the next No. of the Liberal;”] lying back in the carriage, the four horses ready to drop with the heat of the noon-day sun. The stillness of all around was yet more felt by the shrill scream of a solitary curlew, which, perhaps attracted by the body, whirled in such narrow circles round the pile, that it might have been struck with the hand; and was so fearless, that it could not be driven away.”
| The Age Reviewed | |