some observation, and called forth from certain critics an expression of censure upon the author, who had delayed, till the scene was closed upon a great contemporary, to render a tribute to his genius. This was not the case, however; for during the most calamitous part of Lord Byron's life, the author had, without attempting to justify what could not admit of vindication, done his best to do justice to his distinguished talents, without reserving either his praise or censure until their object was no more. The following article, which appeared in the Quarterly Review, eleven years since, is here inserted, because it serves to show that during Lord Byron's lifetime, and at a period when circum. stances had rendered him personally unpopular, the author's feelings and sentiments towards his illustrious friend, were the same which he has attempted to express in the preceding sketch.

FROM THE QUARTERLY REVIEW, 1816, VOL. XVI.

We have felt ourselves very much affected by the perusal of these poems, nor can we suppose that we are singular in our feelings. Other poets have given us their literary productions as the subject of criticism, impersonally, as it were, and generally

*Review of the Third Canto of Childe Harolde, with other poems, by Lord Byron.

speaking, abstracted from their ordinary habits and feelings; and all, or almost all, might apply to their poetical effusions, though in somewhat a different sense, the l'envoy of Ovid

Sine me, Liber, ibis in urbem.

The works of such authors are indeed before the public, but the character, the habits of the poet, the events of his life and the motives of his writing, are known but to the small circle of literary gos sips, for whose curiosity no food is too insipid. From such, indeed, those supposed to be in intimacy with the individual have sometimes undergone an examination which reminds us of the extravagances of Arabella in the Female Quixote, who expected from every lady she met in society a full and interesting history of her life and adventures, and whose inquiries could only be answered in the words of the "Weary Knife-grinder,”

"Story! God bless you, I have none to tell, maʼam !”

The time, therefore, appeared to be passed, when the mere sin of having been dipped in rhyme, was supposed to exclude the poet from the usual business and habits of life, and to single him out from the herd as a marked deer, expected to make sport by his solitary exertions for escape. Whether this lack of personal distinction has arisen from the

diminished irritability of the rhyming generation, from the peculiar habits of those who have been distinguished in our time, or from their mental efforts having been early directed to modify and to restrain the excess of their enthusiasm, we do not pretend to conjecture; but it is certain, that for many years past, though the number of our successful poets may be as great as at any period of our literary history, we have heard little comparatively of their eccentricities, their adventures, or their distresses. The wretched Dermody is not worth mentioning as an exception, and the misfortunes of Burns arose from circumstances not much connected with his powerful poetical genius.

It has been, however, reserved for our own time to produce one distinguished example of the Muse having descended upon a bard of a wounded spirit, and lent her lyre to tell, and we trust to soothe, afflictions of no ordinary description; afflictions originating probably in that singular combination of feeling which has been called the poetical temperament, and which has so often saddened the days of those on whom it has been conferred. If ever a man could lay claim to that character in all its strength and all its weakness, with its unbounded range of enjoyment, and its exquisite sensibility of pleasure and of pain, it must certainly be granted to Lord Byron. Nor does it require much time, or

a deep acquaintance with human nature, to discover why these extraordinary powers should in many cases have contributed more to the wretchedness than to the happiness of their possessor.

The “imagination all compact,” which the greatest poet who ever lived has assigned as the distinguishing badge of his brethren, is in every case a dangerous gift. It exaggerates, indeed, our expectations, and can often bid its possessor hope, where hope is lost to reason: but the delusive pleasure arising from these visions of imagination, resembles that of a child whose notice is attracted by a fragment of glass, to which a sunbeam has given momentary splendour. He hastens to the spot with breathless impatience, and finds the object of his curiosity and expectation is equally vulgar and worthless. So is it with the man of quick and exalted powers of imagination. His fancy overestimates the object of his wishes, and pleasure, fame, distinction, are alternately pursued, attained, and despised when in his power. Like the enchanted fruit in the palace of a sorcerer, the objects of his admiration lose their attraction and value as soon as they are grasped by the adventurer's hand, and all that remains is regret for the time lost in the chase, and wonder at the hallucination under the influence of which it was undertaken. The disproportion between nope and pos

session which is felt by all men, is thus doubled to those whom nature has endowed with the power of gilding a distant prospect by the rays of imagination. These reflections, though trite and obvious, are in a manner forced from us in considering the poetry of Lord Byron, by the sentiments of weariness of existence and enmity with the world which it so frequently expresses, and by the singular analogy which such sentiments hold with incidents of his life so recently before the public. The works. before us contain so many direct allusions to the author's personal feelings and private history, that it becomes impossible that we should divide Lord Byron from his poetry, or offer our criticism upon the continuation of Childe Harold without reverting to the circumstances in which the commencement of that singular and original work first appeared.

Distinguished by title, and descent from an illustrious line of ancestry, Lord Byron showed, even in his earliest years, that nature had added to those advantages the richest gifts of genius and fancy.. His own tale is partly told in two lines of Lara

"Left by his Sire, too young such loss to know,
Lord of himself, that heritage of woe."

His first literary adventure and its fate are well remembered. The poems which he published in