1830.] [ 399 ] 



*'' JOHN GALT AND LORD BYHON.* 



EVERY man his own biographer would be the beau ideal of biography. 

 We should have a vast deal of vanity, of course ; a vast deal of hypo- 

 crisy, and a vast deal of that gentle coloured fiction, which the novelists 

 term white lies we might have some of a deeper tinge too. But we 

 should have, on the whole, a vast deal of human nature, which is the 

 grand desideratum after all. 



One of the phenomena in that most curious of all phenomena 

 man, is, that in talking of himself, long disguise is impossible. He 

 may have the happiest art of covering the truth in other instances, or the 

 strongest reasons for distorting it in his own, but let the dissembler 

 write half a dozen pages, and we find the truth forcing its way, the true 

 features are seen through the mask, or the paint rubs off by the wear 

 and tear of moments; or he grows tired of the masquerade, flings down 

 his domino, flies out of the artificial light into the real, and gives his 

 natural visage to the inspection of mankind. It is for this reason, that 

 we scorn all Memoirs by a friend Recollections by a near observer 

 Sketches by one in the habit of intercourse for many years and all the 

 other inventions of graceful titles, to tell us that the writer knows nothing 

 of his subject. 



But the affair is different in the present instance, and next to a biogra- 

 phy from the pen of Lord Byron himself, we should probably wish to 

 see a detail such as Mr. Gait could have furnished, if it had occurred 

 to him at an earlier period to make use of his opportunities. He is well 

 known as a novelist ; he is a poet, has been a traveller and writer of 

 travels, and we should conceive from the pleasantness and facility of his 

 present volume, from his quickness in seizing the peculiarities of Byron's 

 wayward character, and his picturesque skill in giving them clearly and 

 gracefully to the world, that he would be as successful in the romance 

 of real life, as in the romance of fiction. 



To the actual history of Byron's career, it cannot be supposed that 

 much addition was in Mr. Gait's power. And we are by no means 

 sorry to escape the eternal stories of his boyhood, his friendship and 

 quarrels, his bufferings with Rice-pudding Morgan, and the other brats 

 of his school : combats which Byron used to triumph in, " through 

 many a thrice told tale," with a silly affectation of precocious valour. 

 But the present biographer has given the only traits of those times 

 which can interest the reader, and spiritedly touched on the probable 

 sources of his love for loneliness, his early conception of natural gran- 

 deur, and his original reluctance to mingle with the pleasant and intelli- 

 gent scenes of the lower world. Byron was undoubtedly a little mad. 

 His mother was mad by misfortune, his father by vice, and his uncle by 

 nature. There was a floating lunacy in every propensity of his mind, 

 and when he, at last, entered public life, every event tended to establish 

 the fluctuation into settled frenzy. Of all the poor and unhappy of the 

 earth, the most tormented must be a poor nobleman. Others may take 

 refuge in a profession, he has none but the poorest, the army, open to 

 him, unless he can reconcile himself to the life of a country churchman- 

 curate, tithe-gatherer, christener, buryer, and all and be prepared to 

 slip out of the world's memory till he slips into his grave ; for, with all 

 the vigour of patronage we never heard of a lord rising to a mitre. 



* The Life of Lord Byron", by John Gait, Esq. London : Colburn and Bentley. 

 No. 1, National Library. 



