He had seen them from the first; true artists are perspicacious: it is in this that they outstrip us; we judge from hearsay and formulas, like cockneys; they, like eccentric beings, from accomplished facts, and things: at twenty-two he perceived the tedium born of constraint desolating all high life:

"There stands the noble hostess, nor shall sink
With the three-thousandth curtsy;

Saloon, room, hall, o'erflow beyond their brink,

And long the latest of arrivals halts,

'Midst royal dukes and dames condemn'd to climb,
And gain an inch of staircase at a time.” 2

He wrote also:

"He (the Count) ought to have been in the country during the hunting season, with a select party of distinguished guests,' as the papers term it. He ought to have seen the gentlemen after dinner (on the hunting days), and the soirée ensuing thereupon-and the women looking as if they had hunted, or rather been hunted; and I could have wished that he had been at a dinner in town, which I recollect at Lord C—'s—small, but select, and composed of the most amusing people. The dessert was hardly on the table, when, out of twelve, I counted five asleep." 3

As for the morals of the upper classes, this is what he says:

Casting my

"Went to my box at Covent Garden to-night. eyes round the house, in the next box to me, and the next, and the next, were the most distinguished old and young Babylonians of quality. . . . It was as if the house had been divided between your public and your understood courtesans;-but the intriguantes much outnumbered the regular mercenaries. Now, where lay the difference between Pauline and her mother, and Lady and daugh

ter? except that the two last may enter Carlton and any other house, and the two first are limited to the Opera and b— house. How I do delight in observing life as it really is!—and myself, after all, the worst of any!" 4

Decorum and debauchery; moral hypocrites, " qui mettent leurs vertus en mettant leurs gants blancs"; an oligarchy which, to preserve its places and its sinecures, ravages Europe, preys on Ireland, and excites the people by making use of the grand words, virtue, Christianity, and liberty: there was truth in all

2 Byron's Works, xvii.; "Don Juan," C. 11, st. lxvii.

Ibid. vi. 18; Letter 512, April 5, 1823.

4 Ibid. ii. 303; Journal, December 17, 1813.

Alfred de Musset.

these invectives. It is only thirty years since the ascendancy of the middle class diminished the privileges and corruptions of the great; but at that time hard words could with justice be thrown at their heads. Byron said, quoting from Voltaire:

66 6

'La Pudeur s'est enfuie des cœurs, et s'est refugiée sur les lèvres.'

'Plus les mœurs sont dépravées, plus les expressions deviennent mesurées; on croit regagner en langage ce qu'on a perdu en vertu.' This is the real fact, as applicable to the degraded and hypocritical mass which leavens the present English generation; and it is the only answer they deserve. Cant is the crying sin of this double

dealing and false-speaking time of selfish spoilers." 7

And then he wrote his masterpiece, " Don Juan." 8

All here was new, form as well as substance; for he had entered into a new world. The Englishman, the Northman, transplanted amongst southern manners and into Italian life, had become imbued with a new sap, which made him bear new fruit. He had been induced to read the rather free satires of Buratti, and the more than voluptuous sonnets of Baffo. He lived in the happy Venetian society, still exempt from political animosities, where care seemed a folly, where life was looked upon as a carnival, pleasure displayed itself openly, not timid and hypocritcal, but loosely arrayed and commended. He amused himself here, impetuously at first, more than sufficient, even more than too much, and almost killed himself by these amusements; but after vulgar gallantries, having felt a feeling of love, he became a cavaliere servente, after the fashion of the country where he dwelt, with the consent of the family of the lady, offering his arm, carrying her shawl, a little awkwardly at first, and wonderingly, but on the whole happier than he had ever been, and fanned by a warm breath of pleasure and abandon. He saw in Italy the overthrow of all English morality, conjugal infidelity established as a rule, amorous fidelity raised to a duty: "There is no convincing a woman here that she is in the smallest degree deviating from the rule of right or the fitness of things in having an amoroso. 10 Love (the sentiment of love) is not merely

an excuse for it, but makes it an actual virtue, provided it is dis

interested, and not a caprice, and is confined to one object." 11 A little later he translated the "Morgante Maggiore" of Pulci, to show "What was permitted in a Catholic country and a bigoted age to a churchman on the score of religion, and to silence those buffoons who accuse me of attacking the Liturgy." 12 He rejoiced in this liberty and this ease, and resolved never to fall again under the pedantic inquisition, which in his country had condemned and damned him past forgiveness. He wrote his "Beppo" like an improvisatore, with a charming freedom, a flowing and fantastic lightness of mood, and contrasted in it the recklessness and happiness of Italy with the prejudices and repulsiveness of England:

"I like... to see the Sun set, sure he'll rise to-morrow, Not through a misty morning twinkling weak as

A drunken man's dead eye in maudlin sorrow,

But with all Heaven t' himself; that day will break as
Beauteous as cloudless, nor be forced to borrow
That sort of farthing candlelight which glimmers
Where reeking London's smoky caldron simmers.

"I love the language, that soft bastard Latin,
Which melts like kisses from a female mouth,
And sounds as if it should be writ on satin,

With syllables which breathe of the sweet South,
And gentle liquids gliding all so pat in,

That not a single accent seems uncouth,

Like our harsh northern whistling, grunting guttural,
Which we're obliged to hiss, and spit, and sputter all.

"I like the women too (forgive my folly),

From the rich peasant cheek of ruddy bronze,
And large black eyes that flash on you a volley
Of rays that say a thousand things at once,
To the high dama's brow, more melancholy,
But clear, and with a wild and liquid glance,
Heart on her lips, and soul within her eyes,
Soft as her clime, and sunny as her skies." 13

With other manners there existed in Italy another morality; there is one for every age, race, and sky-I mean that the ideal model varies with the circumstances which fashion it. In England the severity of the climate, the warlike energy of the race,

11 Ibid. iii. 363; Letter to Moore, Venice, March 25, 1817.

12 Byron's Works, iv. 279; Letter to Murray, Ravenna, February 7, 1820. 13 Ibid. xi.; "Beppo," c. xliii.-xlv. 121.

and the liberty of the institutions prescribe an active life, severe manners, Puritanic religion, the marriage tie strictly kept, a feeling of duty and self-command. In Italy the beauty of the climate, the innate sense of the beautiful, and the despotism of the government induced an idle life, loose manners, imaginative religion, the culture of the arts, and the search after happiness. Each model has its beauties and its plots-the epicurean artist like the political moralist; each shows by its greatnesses the littlenesses of the other, and, to set in relief the disadvantages of the second, Lord Byron had only to set in relief the seductions of the first.

Thereupon he went in search of a hero, and did not find one, which, in this age of heroes, is " an uncommon want." For lack of a better he chose "our ancient friend Don Juan ❞—a scandalous choice: what an outcry the English moralists will make! But, to cap the horror, this Don Juan is not wicked, selfish, odious, like his fellows; he does not seduce, he is no corrupter. When an opportunity arises, he lets himself drift; he has a heart and senses, and, under a beautiful sun, they are easily touched: at sixteen a youth cannot help himself, nor at twenty, nor perhaps at thirty. Lay it to the charge of human nature, my dear moralists; it is not I who made it as it is. If you will grumble, address yourselves higher: we are here as painters, not as makers of human puppets, and we do not answer for the inner structure of our dancing-dolls. Our Don Juan is now going about; he goes about in many places, and in all he is young; we will not launch thunderbolts on his head because he is young; that fashion is past: the green devils and their capers only came on the stage in the last act of Mozart's "Don Giovanni." And, moreover, Juan is so amiable! After all, what has he done that others. don't do! He has been a lover of Catherine II, but he only followed the lead of the diplomatic corps and the whole Russian army. Let him sow his wild oats; the good grain will spring up in its time. Once in England, he will behave himself decently. I confess that he may even there, when provoked, go a-gleaning in the conjugal gardens of the aristocracy; but in the end he will settle, go and pronounce moral speeches in Parliament, become a member of the Society for the Suppression of

14 See Stendhal, "Vie de Giacomo Rossini," and Dean Stanley's "Life of Dr. Arnold." The contrast is complete.

See also Mme. de Staël's Corinne," where this opposition is very clearly grasped.

Vice. If you wish absolutely to have him punished, we will "make him end in hell, or in an unhappy marriage, not knowing which would be the severest: the Spanish tradition says hell; but it is probably only an allegory of the other state." 15 At all events, married or damned, the good folk at the end of the piece will have the pleasure of knowing that he is burning all alive.

Is not this a singular apology? Does it not aggravate the fault? Let us wait; we know not yet the whole venom of the book: together with Juan there are Donna Julia, Haidée, Gulbeyaz, Dudu, and many more. It is here the diabolical poet digs in his sharpest claw, and he takes care to dig it into our weakest side. What will the clergymen and white-chokered reviewers say? For, to speak the truth, there is no preventing it: we must read on, in spite of ourselves. Twice or three times following we meet here with happiness; and when I say happiness, I mean profound and complete happiness-not mere voluptuousness, not obscene gayety; we are far removed from the nicely-written ribaldry of Dorat, and the unbridled license of Rochester. Beauty is here, southern beauty, resplendent and harmonious, spread over everything, over the luminous sky, the calm scenery, corporal nudity, artlessness of heart. Is there a thing it does not deify? All sentiments are exalted under its hands. What was gross becomes noble; even in the nocturnal adventure in the seraglio, which seems worthy of Faublas, poetry embellishes licentiousness. The girls are lying in the large silent apartment, like precious flowers brought from all climates into a conservatory:

"One with her flush'd cheek laid on her white arm,

And raven ringlets gather'd in dark crowd

Above her brow, lay dreaming soft and warm;

One with her auburn tresses lightly bound,

And fair brows gently drooping, as the fruit

Nods from the tree, was slumbering with soft breath,
And lips apart, which show'd the pearls beneath.

A fourth as marble, statue-like and still,

Lay in a breathless, hush'd, and stony sleep;
White, cold, and pure

15 Byron's Works, v. 127; Letter to Mr. Murray, Ravenna, February 16, 1821.

a carved lady on a monument." 16

16 Ibid. xvi.; "Don Juan," c. vi. st. lxvi.-lxviii.