bending scruples, the ladylike austerities, and the cool, elegant dowager - dignities she represents. Fancy a man who has put such soul as he has, and such strength and hope and pride as he has, into those swift poems, which have taken his heart's blood to their making-fancy him, asked by the woman who has set out to widen his hopes and life by all the helps of wifehood, "When pray he means to give up those versifying habits of his?" No, I do not believe he resented this in language. I don't believe he argued the point; I don't believe he made defence of versifying habits; but I imagine that he regarded her with a dazed look, and an eye that saw more than it seemed to see an eye that discerned broad shallows in her, where he had hoped for pellucid depths. I think he felt then-if never before-a premonition that their roads would not lie long together. And yet it gave him a shock-not altogether a pleasant one, we may be sure-when Sir Ralph, the father-in-law, to whose house she had gone on a visit, wrote him politely to the effect that she would never come back." Such things cannot be pleasant; at least, I should judge not. THE PARTING. 209 And so, she thinks something more of marriage than as some highly reckoned conventionalityunder whose cover bickerings may go on and spend their force, and the decent twin masks be always worn. And in him, we can imagine lingering traces of a love for the feminine features in her-for the grace, the dignity, the sweet face, the modesties-but all closed over and buckled up, and stanched by the everlasting and all encompassing buckram that laces her in, and that has so little of the compensating instinctive softness and yieldingness which might hold him in leash and win him back. The woman who cannot — on occasions- put a weakness into her forgiveness, can never put a vital strength into her persuasion. But they part, and part forever; the only wonder is they had not parted before; and still another wonder is, that there should have been zealous hunt for outside causes when so many are staringly apparent within the walls of home. I do not believe that Byron would have lived at peace with one woman in a thousand; I do not believe that Lady Byron would have lived at peace with one man in a hundred. The computation is largely in her favor; although it does not imply necessity for his condemnation as an utter brute. Even as he sails away from England - from which he is hunted with hue and cry, and to whose shores he is never again to return-he drops a farewell to her with such touches of feeling in it, that one wonders-and future readers always will wonder-with what emotions the mother and his child may have read it: "Fare thee well and if for ever, Still for ever-fare thee well! Even tho' unforgiving — never 'Gainst thee shall my heart rebel. Love may sink by slow decay But, by sudden wrench, believe not Hearts can thus be torn away. *This poem appeared about the middle of April, 1816. The final break in his relations with Lady Byron had occurred, probably, in early February of the same year. On December 10, 1815, his daughter Ada was born; and on April 25th, next ensuing, he sailed away from England forever. Byron insisted that the poem ("Fare thee well "), though written in sincerity, was published against his inclinations, through the over-zeal of a friend.-Moore's Life, p. 526, vol. i. THE FAREWELL. And when thou would'st solace gather, 6 Wilt thou teach her to say Father' Though his care she must forego? When her little hands shall press thee, When her lip to thine is prest, Think of him whose prayer shall bless thee; Think of him thy love has blessed. Should her lineaments resemble Those thou never more may'st see, All my faults perchance thou knowest, All my hopes where'er thou goest Wither yet, with thee they go. Even my soul forsakes me now. Torn from every nearer tie, Seared in heart and lone, and blighted— 211 I should have felt warranted in giving some intelligible account of the poet's infelicities at home were it only to lead up to this exhibit of his wondrous literary skill; but I find still stronger reasons in the fact that the hue and cry which followed upon his separation from his wife seemed to exalt the man to an insolent bravado, and a challenge of all restraint- under which his genius flamed up with new power, and with a blighting splendor. Exile. It was on the 25th of April, 1816 (he being then in his twenty-eighth year), that he bade England adieu forever, and among the tenderest of his leave-takings was that from his sister, who had vainly sought to make smooth the difficulties in his home, and who (until Lady Byron had fallen into the blindness of dotage) retained her utmost respect. I cannot forbear quoting two verses from a poem addressed to this devoted sister: "Though the rock of my last hope is shivered To pain - it shall not be its slave; There is many a pang to pursue me; They may crush-but they shall not contemn, "Tis of thee that I think - not of them. |