Byron - Childe Harolds Pilgrimage

Returning, therefore, to all and each my best thanks for their liberality, on one point alone shall I venture an observation. Amongst the many objections justly urged to the very indifferent character of the vagrant Childe (whom, notwithstanding many hints to the contrary, I still maintain to be a fictitious personage), it has been stated, that, besides the anachronism, he is very unknightly, as the times of the knights were times of love, honour, and so forth. Now, it so happens that the good old times, when lamour du bon vieux tems, lamour antique, flourished, were the most profligate of all possible centuries. Those who have any doubts on this subject may consult Sainte-Palaye, passim, and more particularly Vol II. The vows of chivalry were no better kept than any other vows, whatsoever; and the songs of the Troubadours were not more decent, and certainly were much less refined, than those of Ovid. The cours damour, parlemens damour, ou de courtesie et de gentilesse had much more of love than of courtesy or gentleness.

See Rolland on the same subject with Sainte-Palaye. Whatever other objection may be urged to that most unamiable personage Childe Harold, he was so far perfectly knightly in his attributesNo waiter, but a knight templar. By the by, I fear that Sir Tristem and Sir Lancelot were not better than they should be, although very poetical personages and true knights, sans peur, though not sans reproche. If the story of the institution of the Garter be not a fable, the knights of that order have for several centuries borne the badge of a Countess of Salisbury, of indifferent memory. So much for chivalry. Burke need not have regretted that its days are over, though Marie-Antoinette was quite as chaste as most of those in whose honour lances were shivered, and knights unhorsed.

I now leave Childe Harold to live his day, such as he is; it had been more agreeable, and certainly more easy, to have drawn an amiable character. It had been easy to varnish over his faults, to make him do more and express less, but he never was intended as an example, further than to show, that early perversion of mind and morals leads to satiety of past pleasures and disappointment in new ones, and that even the beauties of nature and the stimulus of travel (except ambition, the most powerful of all excitements) are lost on a soul so constituted, or rather misdirected. Had I proceeded with the poem, this character would have deepened as he drew to the close; for the outline which I once meant to fill up for him was, with some exceptions, the sketch of a modern Timon, perhaps a poetical Zeluco. LONDON, 1813