CHARACTERS DT WRITING. 



much -was fanciful, how much was 

 merely aifected, it is impossible for 

 us, and would probably have been 

 impossible for the most intimate 

 friends of Lord Byron, to decide. 

 "Whether there ever existed, or can 

 ever exist, a person answering to 

 the description which he gave of 

 himself may be doubted ; but that 

 he was not such a person is beyond 

 all doubt. It is ridiculous to ima- 

 gine that a man whose mind was 

 really imbued with scorn of his 

 fellow-creatures, would have pub- 

 lished three or four books every 

 year in order to tell them so; or 

 that a man who could say with 

 truth that he neither sought sym- 

 pathy nor needed it, would have 

 admitted all Europe to hear his 

 farewell to his wife, and his bless- 

 ings on his child. In the second 

 canto of Childe Harold, he tells us 

 that he is insensible to fame and 

 obloquy : 

 "111 may such contest now the spirit 



move, 



"Which heeds not keen reproof nor 

 partial praise." 



Yet we know, on the best evi- 

 dence, that, a day or two before he 

 published these lines, he was great- 

 ly, indeed childishly, elated l>y the 

 compliments paid to his maiden 

 speech in the House of Lords. 



"What our grandchildren may 

 think of the character of Lord 

 Byron, as exhibited in his poetry, 

 we will not pretend to guess. It is 

 certain, that the interest which he 

 excited during his life is without a 

 parallel in literary history. The 

 feelings with which young readers 

 of poetry regarded him can be con- 

 ceived only by those who have ex- 

 perienced it. To people who are 

 unacquainted with real calamity, 

 "nothing is so dainty sweet as 

 lovely melancholy." This faint 

 image of sorrow has in all ages 

 been considered by young gentle- 

 men as an agreeable excitement. 

 Old gentlemen and middle-aged 



gentlemen have so many real causes 

 of sadness, that they are rarely in- 

 clined " to be as sad as night only 

 for wantonness." Indeed, they want 

 the power almost as much as the 

 inclination. 



Among that large class of young 

 persons whose reading is almost; 

 entirely confined to works of ima- 

 gination, the popularity of Lord 

 Byron was unbounded. They 

 bought pictures of him : they trea- 

 sured up the smallest relics of him ; 

 they learned his poems by heart, and 

 did their best to write like him, and 

 to look like him. Many of them 

 practised at the glass in the hope of 

 catching the curl of the upper lip, 

 and the scowl of the brow, which ap- 

 pear in some of his portraits. A few 

 discarded their neckcloths in imita- 

 tion of their great leader. For some 

 years the Minerva press sent forth 

 no novel without a mysterious, un- 

 happy, Lara-like peer. The num- 

 ber of hopeful undergraduates and 

 medical students who became 

 things of dark imaginings, on 

 whom the freshness of the heart 

 ceased to fall like dew, whose pas- 

 sions had consumed themselves to 

 dust, and to whom the relief of 

 tears was denied, passes all calcula- 

 tion. This was not the worst. 

 There was created in the minds of 

 many of these enthusiasts a perni- 

 cious and absurd association be- 

 tween intellectual power and moral 

 depravity. 



This affectation has passed away ; 

 and a few more years will destroy 

 whatever yet remains of that ma- 

 gical potency which once belonged 

 to the name of Byron. (Macaulay.) 



CHARACTERS IN WRITING. 



The characters of writing have 

 followed the genius of the barbar- 

 ous ages ; they are well or ill 

 formed, in proportion as the 

 sciences have flourished more or 

 less. Antiquaries remark, that the 

 medals struck during the consulship 



