my heart and soul, as if
these things had taken place a few weeks ago, instead of so many years"
(1864).]

CHAPTER XV.

GENEROSITY A HEROISM.

PARDON, MAGNANIMITY.

It remains for us to examine Lord Byron's generosity under another form.
I mean that which, after having passed by different degrees of moral
beauty, may reach the highest summit of virtue, and become the greatest
triumph of moral strength, because it overcomes the most just
resentments, forgives, returns good for evil, and constitutes the very
heroism of Christian charity.

Did Lord Byron's generosity really attain such a high degree? To
convince ourselves of it, we must again examine his life.

Clemency and forgiveness showed themselves in Lord Byron at all periods
of his life. In childhood, in youth, though so passionate, and so
sensitive at school and at college, so soon as the first explosion was
over, he was ever ready to make peace.

In the poems composed during his boyhood and early youth, he was always
the first to forgive. He even forgave his wicked guardian (Lord
Carlisle). Although this latter only evinced indifference, or worse,
with regard to his ward, Lord Byron dedicated his first poems to him.
The noble earl having further aggravated his faults by behaving in an
unjustifiable manner, Lord Byron was of course greatly irritated, since
he hurled some satirical lines at him. But soon after, at the
intercession of friends, and especially at that of his sister, he showed
himself disposed to forget the faults of his bad guardian with all the
clemency inherent to his generous nature. He writes to Rogers, 27th
June, 1814:--"Are there any chances or possibility of ending this, and
making our peace with Carlisle? I am disposed to do all that is
reasonable (or unreasonable) to arrive at it. I would even have done so
sooner; but the 'Courier' newspaper, and a thousand disagreeable
interpretations, have prevented me."

Afterward, he further sealed this generous pardon by those fine verses
in the third canto of "Childe Harold," where he laments the death of
Major Howard, Lord Carlisle's son, killed at Waterloo.[89]

He forgave Miss Chaworth; and in this case also there was great
generosity. The history of this boyish love is well known. Even if the
name of love should be refused to the feeling entertained by a child of
fifteen for a girl of eighteen, who only looked upon him, it is said, as
a boy, and liked him as a brother, not only on