of the pecuniary obligation appears not to have exceeded 500 _l_.; but,
little or great, the manner in which it was recollected reflects no credit
either on the head or heart of the debtor."
Of the weaknesses on which the writer--bent on verifying Pope's lines on
Atossa--from his vantage in the ground-floor, was enabled to dilate, many
are but slightly magnified. We are told for instance, in very many words,
that Byron clung to the privileges of his rank while wishing to seem above
them; that he had a small library, and was a one-sided critic; that Bayle
and Gibbon supplied him with the learning he had left at school; that,
being a good rider with a graceful seat, he liked to be told of it; that
he showed letters he ought not to have shown; that he pretended to think
worse of Wordsworth than he did; that he knew little of art or music,
adored Rossini, and called Rubens a dauber; that, though he wrote _Don
Juan_ under gin and water, he had not a strong head, &c., &c. It is true,
but not new. But when Hunt proceeds to say that Byron had no sentiment;
that La Guiccioli did not really care much about him; that he admired
Gifford because he was a sycophant, and Scott because he loved a lord;
that he had no heart for anything except a feverish notoriety; that he was
a miser from his birth, and had "as little regard for liberty as
Allieri,"--it is new enough, but it is manifestly not true. Hunt's book,
which begins with a caricature on the frontispiece, and is inspired in the
main by uncharitableness, yet contains here and there gleams of a deeper
insight than we find in all the volumes of Moore--an insight, which, in
spite of his irritated egotism, is the mark of a man with the instincts of
a poet, with some cosmopolitan sympathies, and a courage on occasion to
avow them at any risk. "Lord Byron," he says truly, "has been too much
admired by the English because he was sulky and wilful, and reflected in
his own person their love of dictation and excitement. They owe his memory
a greater regard, and would do it much greater honour if they admired him
for letting them know they were not so perfect a nation as they supposed
themselves, and that they might take as well as give lessons of humanity,
by a candid comparison of notes with civilization at large."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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