]
Byron himself somewhere says, "Strength of endurance is worth all the
talent in the world." "I love the virtues that I cannot share." His own
courage was all active; he had no power of sustained endurance. At a time
when his proper refuge was silence, and his prevailing sentiment--for he
admits he was somehow to blame--should have been remorse, he foolishly
vented his anger and his grief in verses, most of them either peevish or
vindictive, and some of which he certainly permitted to be published. "Woe
to him," exclaims Voltaire, "who says all he could on any subject!" Woe to
him, he might have added, who says anything at all on the subject of his
domestic troubles! The poet's want of reticence at this crisis started a
host of conjectures, accusations, and calumnies, the outcome, in some
degree at least, of the rancorous jealousy of men of whose adulation he
was weary. Then began that burst of British virtue on which Macaulay has
expatiated, and at which the social critics of the continent have laughed.
Cottle, Cato, Oxoniensis, Delia, and Styles, were let loose, and they
anticipated the _Saturday_ and the _Spectator_ of 1869, so that the latter
might well have exclaimed, "Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
Pages:
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158