Swift himself, in whom
early disappointments and wrongs had opened a vein of bitterness that
never again closed, affords a far closer parallel to the fate of our
noble poet,[112] as well in the untimeliness of the trials he had
been doomed to encounter, as in the traces of their havoc which they
left in his character.
That the romantic fancy of youth, which courts melancholy as an
indulgence, and loves to assume a sadness it has not had time to earn,
may have had some share in, at least, fostering the gloom by which the
mind of the young poet was overcast, I am not disposed to deny. The
circumstance, indeed, of his having, at this time, among the ornaments
of his study, a number of skulls highly polished, and placed on light
stands round the room, would seem to indicate that he rather courted
than shunned such gloomy associations.[113] Being a sort of boyish
mimickry, too, of the use to which the poet Young is said to have
applied a skull, such a display might well induce some suspicion of
the sincerity of his gloom, did we not, through the whole course of
his subsequent life and writings, track visibly the deep vein of
melancholy which nature had imbedded in his character.
Such was the state of mind and heart,--as, from his own testimony and
that of others, I have collected it,--in which Lord Byron now set out
on his indefinite pilgrimage; and never was there a change wrought in
disposition and character to which Shakspeare's fancy of "sweet bells
jangled out of tune" more truly applied.
Pages:
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255