XX INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 



Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill, 

 Smit with the love of sacred song, but chief 

 Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath, 

 That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow, 

 Nightly I visit : 



Thus with the year 



Seasons return ; but not to me returns 

 Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, 

 Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, 

 Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine ; 

 But cloud instead, and ever-during dark 

 Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men 

 Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair 

 Presented with a universal blank 

 Of Nature's works, to me expunged and rased, 

 And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. 



PARADISE LOST, b. 3. 



But our own times furnish, perhaps, a more 

 remarkable instance in Lord Byron. Unlike 

 Milton's, his soul had not been soothed into 

 wisdom and nourished into power in the silence 

 of retirement, and by the beam of the academic 

 lamp, but had been hurried through the agi- 

 tating splendours of rank and fashion, the in- 

 toxication of unexampled popularity, the fasci- 

 nations of love and beauty ; but he had made 

 acquaintance with Nature in her solitude and 



