INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. XV11 



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. iii. 



Thomson and Cowper powerfully promoted this 

 spirit amongst their contemporaries ; but our own 

 times furnish, perhaps, a more remarkable instance 

 in Lord Byron. Unlike theirs, 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 

 agitating splendours of rank and fashion, the intoxi- 

 cation of unexampled popularity, the fascinations of 

 love and beauty ; but he had made acquaintance 

 with Nature in her solitude and sublimity in his 

 boyhood ; and with what ardent sighs did he long 

 after her ! with what contempt did he turn from 

 all other allurements, and pour into her bosom the 

 burning language of his devotion! He may be 

 said to have been her pilgrim into all lands in 

 which she displays the sovereignty of her beauty 

 and grandeur. 



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