With strong and never regulated passions, great pride of birth, a full sense of his abilities, and little but debts and destitution before him, he was so depressed in spirits that a profound cynicism took possession of his mind, and from that hour was the prevailing feature of his character. Mr. Moore, in his Memoirs, talks a great deal of what I think nonsense about a disappointed heart and waste affections; Lord Byron was not the man to be crushed by such poetical feelings. He was, perhaps, as vain a man as ever lived, he was extravagantly sensitive, deeply alive to neglect, and looking for too much admiration before he had earned it. Witn the pride of a poet, Moore says, 'Luckily he became a poet and not a legislator." Had his poetry proved such as to have been a blessing to his fellow-men, instead of only dazzling and astonishing them, I should have agreed with him; as it is, I cannot but think one good law would weigh very heavily in the balance against it. A man who is a born British peer is born to honourable duties, and the chance possessor of that elevated rank, has no right to boast of it when he neglects them. He could not say with his favourite Pope:

"I left no calling for this idle trade,
No duty broke."

With his vast talents, and the position he was placed in, he should have shaken off his annoyances and difficulties "like dewdrops from the lion's mane," and have become a great, good man, as well sa splendid genius. It cannot be denied that many circumstances conspired to give the bias to his genius, and the tone to is character; the poetical mind is too apt to let the idiosnycrasy of the man associate itself with the flights of imagination, which *sure to engender vanity, egotism, disappointment, and cynicism. "ne poet fancies his mission so exalted, that all the world should ay it homage, whereas nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every usand of his fellow-men care not a straw for him or his verse. While struggling with the difficulties created by high rank, pride birth, ungovernable passions, and a slender income, the severe ticism of the Edinburgh Review seems to have decided his te: he answered that review, his answer proved his ability and as very much admired; he had found he possessed a weapon ich could wound the world which he falsely thought his enemy, And from that hour to the day of his death, he became a cynic and satirist; the joyous spirit which had given zest to his debauchees was changed to gibing mockery, and everybody and everyng was viewed through the distorted medium of selfishness, bittered by poverty and cynicism, rendered almost supermanly keen by extraordinary genius.

Such was the tone of mind in which Lord Byron left England the summer of the year he came of age, to travel, more with tl hope of getting ride of home, that is of his country, than with th view of acquiring knowledge. But such a penetrating, observar mind could not avoid accumulating additions to his stores at ever step, and few great writers have enjoyed such extraordinar opportunities. No poetry of a high rank was ever so completel founded upon facts as Byron's; it is true his brilliant fancy thre those facts out in new and striking lights, or covered them wit beautiful ornaments, but all were drawn from himself, his friends the scenes he had actually beheld, or the books he had read This gives a solidity, if I may be allowed the word, to all he wrote because it makes it all intelligible. Nothing could be mor different than his genius and that of Shelley, in this respect Shelley was possessed of an inventive, unbounded fancy; if ther is a reality in his poetry, it lies too deep for common observers, and whilst idolized by a few, he will never be generally understood o appreciated as he perhaps deserves.

Consistently with this self-painting, the poem with which hi mind must have been busy during his first travels, is entirely self reflective, that is to say, his own actual adventures, wandering and thoughts. And what an astonishing grasp of faculties doe "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" display! "To a Poet," say Johnson, in Rasselas, "nothing can be useless. Whatever i beautiful and whatever is dreadful must be familiar to his imagina tion he must be conversant with all that is awfully vast of elegantly little." After this direction is "Childe Harold" written but with a much wider scope; the vices, the follies, the fallacies the eccentricities of mankind are rendered subject to the muse as well as the poetical elements, and all tinged by the cynical spirit of the writer, like the soupçon of vinegar which gave piquancy to many of Soyer's favourite dishes.

If confined to the Old World, Byron's travels were as judiciously directed as possible. In his first wanderings he seems to have been in search of the beautiful and the classic, which was natural for a young man educated, as it is the fashion at our high schools and colleges, upon the writings left us by Greece and Rome. His first place of halt was Lisbon, whose beautiful bay must have been strongly provocative of a love of travel, whilst the degradation of the inhabitants of the country furnished ample matter for the indulgence of his cynical mood. From Lisbon he went to Seville and Cadiz, still observing all, and never forgetting to throw woman, the principal object of his thoughts through life, into the foreground of every picture he took. He then visited Malta, Prevessa, Salaro, Arta, Joannini, Zeltza, and Topaleen, where he was introduced to

Ali Pasha. Gratified with his interview, he returned to Joannini, and there began to transfer to paper the impressions of his pilgrimage, in the poem which will prove his principal claim to a niche in the Temple of Fame.

1 have not space to follow him through his delightful wanderings amidst classic regions, though perfectly entering into his enjoyment of them. No place illustrated by great men or important events was neglected, and, in addition to the great poem, which must have been always prominent in his mind, the muse was frequently called upon to commemorate striking scenes and incidents, or interesting persons. From his self-acknowledged libertine character, every female he writes verses upon is supposed to have been a mistress; but, although by no means disposed to be the champion of his continence, I am convinced there are many exceptions to this, and that to the above-mentioned foolish boasting may be added a considerable quantity of the fiction of poetical license. He remained six weeks at Athens, for the sake of viewing all the classic scenes of that interesting country; and though he addressed "Maid of Athens, &c." to the daughter of the house in which he was located, before he quitted that city, there is not even a suspicion that he did not leave her untainted by the scant morality of London and Cambridge.

He seemed determined to leave no spot he had ever read of unvisited; from Athens he went to Smyrna, where he wrote the second canto of "Childe Harold." He next explored the ruins of Ephesus, and from thence proceeded to Constantinople. As a poet, he could not be so near the great scene of Homer's action, without making a pilgrimage to the Troad, which, in spite of Mr. Bryant, confirmed him in his Homeric faith. But he was not satisfied with believing in Homer, he wished to prove one of the poetically-registered Wonders of antiquity practicable, and, without the hope of having a Hero to welcome him on his landing, ho rivalled Leander by swimming from Sestos to Abydos. Of this feat he was always very proud, as indeed he was of everything that proved his courage, agility, or strength: when, in his later travels, he was compelled, as he says, "to give an impertinent fellow a good English punch in the guts," he did not fail to mention it in more than one letter. He made another short sojourn at Constantinople, during which he enjoyed an excursion through the Bosphorus to the Black Sea and Cyanean Symplegades; he then returned to Athens, where, after a trip to Corinth, and a tour of the Morea to visit Velay Pasha, he seemed to linger as loath to depart, and took up his residence at the Franciscan convent. While here he wrote many of the beautiful smaller pieces rendered interesting by local circumstances and personal associations, by which they are to be

traced, among which may be particularly noted "The Curse of Minerva," a severe, though perhaps well-deserved castigation of Lord Elgin, for his depredations upon the sculptural remains of Greece.

After an absence of two years he, in July 1811, returned to England, a wiser, but I fear not a better man." Whether he had been as various and successful in his amours as he would lead his readers to think, I know not; but there was always a recklessness of the peace of others which led him to write verses to every lady he admired, whatever her position might be. Those to Mrs. Musters (Miss Chaworth), on his leaving England were, to say the least, inconsiderate, and showed no regard for the happiness of the person to whom they were addressed. Of the same class were lines to "Florence" (Mrs. Spenser Smith), each piece beautifully proving to the ladies of what little value was his boasted love; take for instance, the last line of the address to "Mrs. Musters,' and the verses to "Florence," and the "Maid of Athens," which so quickly followed! Neither in his life nor his writings did Byron show the least acquaintance with true, pure love, or a proper appreciation of the character of woman. He has a poet's eye for beauty, but it is likewise the eye of a sensualist. His few poems addressed to " Thyrza," seem to be the only ones on which secrecy placed its finger; he never would tell even his most intimate friends who she was. Some persons pretended that there was likewise a mystery about a period of his travels in Greece, in which a tale of horror was mixed up, but I can find nothing to prove there was any foundation for it, beyond the character of his writings, and the mystification he sometimes delighted to deal in.

On his return to England, he proposed settling at Newstead, and sent down some furniture to render it more comfortable. He had established his mother there before his departure, reversing, in his last letter, the position of mother and son, by sending her advice to behave properly to her neighbours, "for you know," he adds, 66 you are a vixen." Mrs. Byron had for some years enjoyed a pension from government of £300 a year; why granted nobody could discover; but it must have been a great relief to her needy son. His coming home proved the signal for her death; for, when the upholsterer appeared with the furniture, she, from some little mistake on his part, flew into one of those fits of rage that used to amuse her son so much, but which, in this instance, she carried beyond a joke, as the passion produced a fit, and the fit death. As the mother of a Byron, he, of course, paid her decent respect, but he was not likely even to affect grief.

Once more in London, he fell willingly into the vortex of pleasure,

to which, very shortly great inducements were added. On the 27th of February, he made his first speech in the House of Lords; it was respectable, but yet did not hold out a promise of much oratorical excellence, and he seldom spoke afterwards. But, as "English Bards" had been closely connected with his taking his seat, so his first speech was as quickly followed by the great event of his life, the publication of " Childe Harold." Like several other poets, he preferred other comparatively worthless works to this his best, and was with great difficulty prevailed upon to publish it. He however, was persuaded by his distant relation, Mr. Dallas, the author of some novels, to whom he gave the copyright. He was soon made aware of his error; for the sensation created by the poem was immense; as he expresses it: "I awoke one morning, and found myself famous!" He had no longer to complain of the world's neglect, the danger now was of his being spoiled by adulation. To him who three years before could not gain entrance to good society, not only was every door of the great and the rich thrown open, but all the fascinations of beauty and pleasure were put in force to allure the titled genius into their magic circle. His unexpected success put an end to all ideas of retirement; no man ever coveted admiration more keenly, and he now enjoyed it to satiety. The very persons he had so freely vituperated in his satire, felt their anger melt away beneath the rays of his genius, and eagerly sought his friendship. It is impossible to trace the various reconciliations without a smile. Moore, whom he had sharply censured under the name of Little, began with something approaching to hostility, but he was easily mollified, and became the noble poet's Fidus Achates. I do not say he became his friend, in the exalted and scarcely in the wordly meaning of the word; in a letter to Moore, after they had long been on the most intimate relations, he says: "I don't know what to say about friendship, I never was in friendship but once, in my nineteenth year, and then it gave me as much trouble as love. I am afraid, as Whitbread's sire said to the king, who wanted to knight him, I am too old; but, nevertheless, no one wishes you more friends, fame, and felicity, than yours, &c." Moore felt this cold-blooded, flippant declaration deeply, and made no reply for some time. In fact, Byron only told the truth; he could be kind and generous as a patron or protector, but his friendships were like his loves-selfish and not proof against absence. His letters are exceedingly pleasant reading, but we feel assured that Moore has suppressed many that would have betrayed double dealing, and the bulk of them are addressed to persons who could be of use to him. The romantic friendship he declared for Lord Clare was like his love for Mary Duff and Miss Chaworth, nothing but the dream of a