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Updated: June 1, 2025
On the 16th of April, 1816, shortly before his departure, he wrote to Mr. Rogers: "My sister is now with me, and leaves town to-morrow. Sheridan for being unable to wait upon him this evening." In all this storm and stress, Byron's one refuge was in the affection which rises like a well of purity amid the passions of his turbid life.
I have a letter from Lockhart, promising to be down by next Wednesday, that is, to-day. I will consult him about Byron's Exec., and as to these poems said to be his Lordship's. They are very probably first copies thrown aside, or may not be genuine at all. I will be glad to see Lockhart. My pronunciation is a good deal improved. My time glides away ill employed, but I am afraid of the palsy.
He wandered far, but he always knew it; and, though he could hardly find terms to express his contempt for the Church, there is no line of Byron's writing which is a slur at the Bible. On the other hand, much of his work reveals a passion for the beauty of it as well as its truth. His most melodious writing is in that group of Hebrew melodies which were written to be sung.
As a friend I pitched into him, asking him why he drank too much, why he lived beyond his means and got into debt, why he did nothing and read nothing, why he had so little culture and so little knowledge; and in answer to all my questions he used to smile bitterly, sigh, and say: 'I am a failure, a superfluous man'; or: 'What do you expect, my dear fellow, from us, the debris of the serf-owning class? or: 'We are degenerate. . . . Or he would begin a long rigmarole about Onyegin, Petchorin, Byron's Cain, and Bazarov, of whom he would say: 'They are our fathers in flesh and in spirit. So we are to understand that it was not his fault that Government envelopes lay unopened in his office for weeks together, and that he drank and taught others to drink, but Onyegin, Petchorin, and Turgenev, who had invented the failure and the superfluous man, were responsible for it.
I had never seen so fine a face, such perfection of features, and such a clear, dark, smooth skin. It was a finer face than Lord Byron's, whom I had seen more than once, and wanted that hellish curl of the lip; and, as to figure, he could, to look at him, at any time have eaten up his lordship stoop and roop to his breakfast.
From Leghorn he drove with the Hunts to Pisa, and established them in the ground-floor of Byron's Palazzo Lanfranchi, as comfortably as was consistent with his lordship's variable moods. The negotiations which had preceded Hunt's visit to Italy, raised forebodings in Shelley's mind as to the reception he would meet from Byron; nor were these destined to be unfulfilled.
Of this I am certain, that I never witnessed greater kindness than in Lord Byron." Byron's note to which Hoppner alludes is in Marino Faliero. I was persecuted by these tourists even to my riding ground at Lido, and reduced to the most disagreeable circuits to avoid them.
That was a wonderfully clever book, of rather questionable moral effects, I think; the same sort of cynical gloom and discontent which pervade Byron's writings prevail in that; and I thought it a pity, because in other respects it seems a genuine book, true to life and human nature. A few days before I heard of his death, Mr.
H. had been brought up to attend operas instead of metaphysical preaching, and Mary had been nourished on Byron's poetry instead of "Edwards on the Affections."
But this would be too harsh; and, besides, Lord Byron's morals have been improving while his outward man has swollen to such unconscionable circumference. Would that he were leaner; for, though he did me the honor to present his hand, yet it was so puffed out with alien substance that I could not feel as if I had touched the hand that wrote Childe Harold.
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