1832.] A Mystery for the Byron-Critics. 293 



overheard Miss Chaworth saying to her maid, ' Do you think I could 

 care anything for that lame boy ?' This speech, as he himself described 

 it, was like a shot through his heart. Though late at night when he 

 heard it, he instantly darted out of the house, and scarcely knowing 

 whither he ran, never stopped till he found himself at Newstead." 

 (vol. i. p. 56.) 



It is not for persons of ordinary sensibility to conceive what a mind 

 like Byron's must have suffered during all this, or how he must have 

 been impressed at that age with every thought and sentiment in a story, 

 in so many respects similar to his own. For Arnaud, in this novel, 

 with the " constitutional instincts" already alluded to, had also, for- 

 getting his hump, become intensely enamoured of the pretty Camilla ; 

 but to his deep mortification she rejected his admiration in favour of 

 his half-brother Lewis. Circumstances call the latter away, and thus 

 proceeds the tale : " On the morning of their departure, Arnaud secretly 

 followed Lewis to a knoll pleasantly shaded by tall pines, where Ca- 

 milla usually could be found at her diversions. The tears the two latter 

 shed at separation, fell like oil on Arnaud' s passions, which were fer- 

 mented to the crisis of outrage., when to some jealous remark from 

 Lewis, Camilla earnestly replied, ' Indeed ! indeed ! I can't fancy him, 

 he has so ugly a shoulder !' These words burnt to Arnaud's heart worse 

 than a venomed javelin," &c. (vol. iv. p. 256.) 



This poignantly-felt circumstance, together with the gradual dislike 

 to him of his own parents, and the avoidance and ridicule of his youth- 

 ful companions, rankled in the sensitive mind of the boy, and is repre- 

 sented to have stirred up the deepest feelings connected with his strong 

 and wayward passions. Speaking of the parents of Arnaud, it is said 

 " The bitterest consciousness of his deformity was derived from their 

 indelicate, though, perhaps, insensible alteration of conduct ; and those 

 culpabilities which before they had nourished in him as the eccentri- 

 cities of a bold spirit, they now censured and condemned." (p. 250.) 

 All this, together with tantalizing jealousy of his brother, who had won 

 the love of Camilla, and his constantly being reminded of his misfor- 

 tune, not only by the ill-concealed sneers of his own comrades and his 

 father's servants, but by his very shadow on the wall, or his image 

 reflected in the clear bosom of the pool, wrought upon his mind until 

 he cursed the voice of the people, who in general derided him, not as 

 " the voice of God," but rather as the croaking of a demon ; spoke of 

 his own person as " his abhorrent enemy," adding that " his shoulder 

 depended like a millstone on him to sink him down to hell." " Yet would 

 he decry the slightest allusion to it in another, and so sickly was his 

 sensibility in that particular, that he wished the terms hunch and 

 crookedness could be abolished from language and memory," c. (ib 

 p. 261.) 



Though a lame or club-foot is a much less staring deformity than a 

 hump on the shoulder, yet the impression that this narrative and all its 

 adjuncts made on the mind of the youthful poet, painting as it did in 

 exaggerated colours and strong language, what he must himself have 

 felt so deeply, and at a period of life when they were appreciated with 

 all their poignancy (the " Brothers" was published in 1803, when 

 Byron was fifteen), is evident not only from his attempting to dramatize 

 the incident many years after under the title of " The Deformed Trans- 

 formed," but from, many other circumstances, both in his own life and 



