wenn er solche Behauptungen aufstellt, wie: "The highest pictures in Lord Byron's poetry were imitations" (S. 144), oder: "Byron's dislike of Wordsworth was jealousy" (S. 227)1, oder: "In his anxiety also to identify his admirers with those who conferred existing reputation he was as anxious to acknowledge the merits of all the writers in fashion, as he was careful of not committing himself with the rest. All his public praises were bestowed upon: Scott, Moore, Campbell, Rogers." (Hunt verstand Byrons poetische Anschauungen ebensowenig wie dieser die Hunts.) Hunt irrt weiter in Kleinigkeiten, wenn er Stendhals Versicherung, daß Byron „Arabisch“ könne, widerspricht (S. 196), denn Stendhal behauptete nur Byrons Kenntnis des Armenischen, die erwiesen ist durch Übersetzungen (Prothero IV 429) und durch die Veröffentlichung einer armenischen Grammatik. Er irrt zu Byrons Gunsten, wenn er ihn als guten Reiter darstellt (S. 72 und öfters), der Byron nicht war, wie uns Lady Blessington berichtet, die ja in solchen Dingen besser Bescheid wußte. Sein Irrtum in der Beurteilung von Byrons Liaison mit Mary Chaworth ist natürlich (S. 180), er ist im Nachteil Moore gegenüber, der anscheinend in alles eingeweiht war. Anderseits ist er als guter Psycholog skeptisch in Bezug auf Byrons Worte auf seinem Totenbett: "My dear wife, my dear child" (S. 192). Edgcumbes Untersuchungen zeigen, wie begründet diese Skepsis war. Ähnlich gut sind seine analysierenden Bemerkungen über Byrons Ehe (S. 10). Die Liaison mit Gräfin Guiccioli, damals allgemein als die wichtigste angesehen, beschränkt

1 Vielleicht habe ich unrecht, diese Behauptung ganz von der Hand zu weisen.

er auf ihre tatsächliche Bedeutung', und er war der erste, der das tat. In ähnlicher Weise wies er den „dichterischen Wahnsinn" zurück, Lamartines „Esprit mystérieux, mortel, ange ou démon“ (S. 146). Er durchschaute Byron, wenn dieser von Griechenland sprach (S. 87), und er sagte sehr gut: "Byron had as little regard for real liberty as Alfieri. . . but he had an impatience of any despotism of his own" (S. 186). Seine Ausführungen über Byrons religiöse Anschauungen (S. 220) stimmen mit dem überein, was Hobhouse überliefert. In ähnlicher Weise bestätigt Lady Blessington Hunts Bemerkungen über Byrons Adelsstolz und Furcht vor dem Lächerlichen.

Als zusammenfassendes Urteil muß ich Hunt selbst zitieren; es ist das beste Urteil, das ich kenne, und man möchte kein Wort geändert wissen. In der Vorrede des Buches schrieb er (S. VII): "I could not conceal from myself, on looking over the manuscript that in renewing my intercourse with him in imagination, I had unvoluntarily felt an access of the spleen and indignation, which I experienced as a man who thought himself illtreated. Whit this to a certain extent, the account is coloured, though never with a shadow of untruth." An Moore schreibt er am 8. Juni 1841 (Corr. II 37): "I have

1 Hunt sagt im wesentlichen, was Helen Rossetti-Angeli in die glücklichen Worte faßt (S. 136): “Byron's attitude throughout all this was in truth one of amused and semi-despairing resignation."

2 "Byron was sorry now and then that he ever came to Greece. He expressed anger at the Greek Committee for publishing his letter from Genoa in which he talked of going, so that when his intention was made known, he thought himself bound to act upon it" (Stanhope [Hobhouse, Recoll. III 60]). “He (Byron) confessed to him (Barry) that he would not go on the Greek expedition even then, but that Hobhouse and the others would laugh at him" (ebd. S. 153).

often expressed my regret at my former remarks on him, not because they were true for they were critical errors excepted; but because a better knowledge of myself has taught me that no one frail human being has a right to sit in that manner of judgment on another." Und zehn Jahre später in der Autobiographie (II 91 ff.): "I do not mean that I ever wrote any fictions about him. I wrote nothing which I did not feel to be true, or think so. But I can say with Alamanni, that I was then a young man, and that I am now advanced in years. I can say, that I was agitated by grief and anger, and that I am now free from anger. I can say that I was far more alive to other people's defects than to my own, and that I am now sufficiently sensible of my own to show to others the charity which I need myself. I can say moreover that apart from a little allowance for provocation, I do not think it right to exhibit what is amiss, or may be thought amiss in the character of a fellowcreature, out of any feeling but unmistakeable sorrow, or the wish to lessen evils, which society itself may have caused. Lord Byron with respect to the points on which he erred and suffered (for on all others a man like himself, poet and wit, could not but give and receive pleasure), was the victim of a bad bringing up, of a series of false positions in society, of evils arising from the mistakes of society itself, of personal disadvantage (which his feelings exaggerated), nay, of his very advantages of person, and of a face so handsome as to render him an object of admiration. Even the lameness, of which he had such a resentment, only softened the admiration with tenderness. But he did not begin life under good influences. He had a mother, herself, in all

probability the victim of bad training, who would fling the dishes from table at his head, and tell him, he would be a scoundrel like his father. His father, who was a cousin to the previous lord, has been what is called a man upon town, and was neither rich, nor very respectable. The young lord whose means had not yet recovered themselves, went to school, noble but poor, expecting to be in the ascendant with his title, yet kept down by the inconsistency of his condition. He left

school to put on the cap with the gold tuft, which is worshipped at college; he left college to fall into some of the worst hands on the town: his first productions were contemptuously criticized, and his genius was thus provoked into satire; his next were overpraised, which increased his self-love; - he married, when his temper had been soured by difficulties, and his will and pleasure pampered by the sex; and he went companionless into a foreign country, where all this perplexity could repose without being taught better and where the sense of a lost popularity could be drowned in licence. Should we not wonder that he retained so much of the grand and beautiful in his writings? that the indestructible tendency of the poetical to the good should have struggled to so much purpose through faults and inconsistencies? - rather than quarrel with his would-be misanthropy and his effeminate wailings? The worst things which he did, were to gird resentfully at women and to condescend to some other pettiness of conduct which he persuaded himself were self-defences on his own part, and merited by his fellow-creatures. But he was never incapable of generosity, he was susceptible of the tenderest emotions; and though I doubt, from a cer

on not

tain proud and stormy look about the upper part of his face, whether his command of temper could ever have been quite relied on, yet I cannot help thinking, that had he been properly brought up, there would have been nobody capable of more lasting and loving attachments. The lower part of his face was a model of beauty. I am sorry I ever wrote a syllable respecting Lord Byron which might have been spared. I have still to relate my connection with him, but it will be related in a different manner. Pride, it is said, will have a fall; and I must own, that on this subject, I have experienced the truth of the saying. I had prided myself, I should pride myself now, if I had not been thus rebuked being one of those who talk against others. I went counter to this feeling in a book; and to crown the absurdity of the contradiction, I was foolish enough to suppose that the very fact of my so doing would show that I had done it in no other instance! that having been thus public in the error, credit would be given me for never having been privately so! such are the delusions inflicted on us by selflove. When the consequence was represented to me as characterized by my enemies, I felt, enemies though they were, as if I blushed from head to foot. It is true, I had been goaded to the task by misrepresentations; I had resisted every other species of temptation to do it; and, after all, I said. more in his excuse, and less to his disadvantage, than many of those, who reproved me. But enough, I owed the acknowledgment to him and to myself; and I shall proceed on my course with a sigh for both, and I trust in the goodwill of the sincere."

Mit den Worten; "I am sorry, I ever wrote a syll