taking upon itself all shapes, from Jove down to Scapin, and a disposition veering with equal facility to all points of the moral compass, not even the ancient fancy of the existence of two souls within one bosom would seem at all adequately to account for the varieties, both of power and character, which the course of his conduct and writings during these few feverish years displayed. Without going back so far as the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold, which one of his bitterest and ablest assailants has pronounced to be, in point of execution, the sublimest poetical achievement of mortal pen,' we have, in a similar strain of strength and splendour, the Prophecy of Dante, Cain, the Mystery of Heaven and Earth, Sardanapalus, all produced during this wonderful period of his genius. To these also are to be added four other dramatic pieces, which, though the least successful of his compositions, have yet, as Poems, few equals in our literature; while, in a more especial degree, they illustrate the versatility of taste and power so remarkable in him, as being founded, and to this very circumstance, perhaps, owing their failure, on a severe classic model, the most uncongenial to his own habits and temperament, and the most remote from that bold, unshackled license which it had been the great mission of his genius, throughout the whole realms of Mind, to assert. In contrast to all these high-toned strains, and struck off during the same fertile period, we find his Don Juan-in itself an epitome of all the marvellous contrarieties of his character-the Vision of Judg ment, the Translation from Pulci, the Pamphlets on Pope, on the British Review, on Blackwood,-together with a swarm of other light, humourous trifles, all flashing forth carelessly from the same mind that was, almost at the same moment, personating, with a port worthy of such a presence, the mighty spirit of Dante, or following the dark footsteps of Scepticism over the ruins of past worlds, with Cain. All this time, too, while occupied with these ideal creations, the demands upon his active sympathies, in real life, were such as almost any mind but his own would have found sufficient to engross its every thought and feeling. An amour, not of that light, transient kind which goes without a burden,' but, on the contrary, deep-rooted enough to endure to the close of his days, employed as restlessly with its first hopes and fears a portion of this period as with the entanglements to which it led, political and domestic, it embarrassed the remainder. Scarcely, indeed, had this disturbing passion begun to calm, when a new source of excitement presented itself in that conspiracy into which he flung himself so fearlessly, and which ended, as we have seen, but in multiplying the objects of his sympathy and protection, and driving him to a new change of home and scene. When we consider all these distractions that beset him, taking into account also the frequent derangement of his health, and the time and temper he must have thrown away on the minute drudgery of watching over every item of his household expenditure, the mind is lost in almost incredulous astonishment at the wonders he was able to achieve under such circumstances at the variety and prodigality of power with which, in the midst of such interruptions and hindrances, his bright soul broke out on every side,' and not only held on its course, unclogged, through all these difficulties, but even extracted out of the very struggles and annoyances it encountered new nerve for its strength, and new fuel for its fire. While thus at this period, more remarkably than at any other during his life, the unparalleled versatility of his genius was unfolding itself, those quick, cameleon-like changes of which his character, too, was capable were, during the same time, most vividly, and in strongest contrast, drawn out. To the world, and more especially to England,-the scene at once of his glories and his wrongs,-he presented himself in no other aspect than that of a stern, haughty misanthrope, self-banished from the fellowship of men and, most of all, from that of Englishmen. The more genial and beautiful inspirations of his muse were, in this point of view, looked upon but as lucid intervals between the paroxysms of an inherent malignancy of nature; and even the laughing effusions of his wit and humour got credit for no other aim than that which Swift boasted of, as the end of all his own labours, 'to vex the world rather than divert it.' How totally all this differed from the Byron of the social hour, they who lived in familiar intercourse with him may be safely left to tell. The sort of ferine reputation which he had acquired for himself abroad prevented numbers, of course, of his countrymen, whom he would have most cordially welcomed, from seeking his acquaintance. But, as it was, no English gentleman ever approached him, with the common forms of introduction, that did not come away at once surprised and charmed by the kind courtesy and facility of his manners, the unpretending play of his conversation, and, on a nearer intercourse, the frank, youthful spirits, to the flow of which he gave way with such a zest, as even to deceive some of those who best knew him into the impression, that gaiety was after all the true bent of his disposition. To these contrasts which he presented, as viewed publicly and privately, is to be added also the fact, that, while braving the world's ban so boldly, and asserting man's right to think for himself with a freedom and even daringness unequalled, the original shyness of his nature never ceased to hang about him; and while at a distance he was regarded as a sort of autocrat in intellect, revelling in all the confidence of his own great powers, a somewhat nearer observation enabled a common acquaintance at Venice* to detect, under all this, traces of that self-distrust and bashfulness which had marked him as a boy, and which never entirely forsook him through the whole of his career. Still more singular, however, than this contradiction between the public and private man-a contradiction not unfrequent, and, in some cases, more apparent than real, as depending upon the relative position of the observer-were those contrarieties and changes not less startling, which his character so often exhibited, as compared with itself. He who, at one moment, was seen intrenched in the most absolute self-will, would, at the very next, be found all that was docile and amenable. To-day, storming the world in its strong holds, as a misanthrope and satirist -to-morrow, learning, with implicit obedience, to fold a shawl, as a Cavaliere-the same man who had so obstinately refused to surrender, either to friendly remonstrance or public outcry, a single line of Don Juan, at the mere request of a gentle Donna agreed to cease it altogether; nor would venture to resume this The Countess Albrizzi-see her Sketch of his Character. task (though the chief darling of his muse) till, with some difficulty, he had obtained leave from the same ascendant quarter. Who, indeed, is there that, without some previous clue to his transformations, could have been at all prepared to recognise the coarse libertine of Venice in that romantic and passionate lover who, but a few months after, stood weeping before the fountain in the garden at Bologna? or, who could have expected to find in the close calculator of sequins and baiocchi, that generous champion of Liberty whose whole fortune, whose very life itself were considered by him but as trifling sacrifices for the advancement, but by a day, of her cause? And here naturally our attention is drawn to the consideration of another feature of his character, connected more intimately with the bright epoch of his life now before us. Notwithstanding his strongly marked prejudices in favour of rank and high birth, we have seen with what ardour,-not only in fancy and theory, but practically, as in the case of the Italian Carbonari,-he embarked his sympathies unreservedly on the current of every popular movement towards freedom. Though of the sincerity of this zeal for liberty the seal set upon it so solemnly by his death leaves us no room to doubt, a question may fairly arise whether that general love of excitement, let it flow from whatever source it might, by which, more or less, every pursuit of his whole life was actuated, was not predominant among the impulses that governed him in this; and, again, whether it is not probable that, like Alfieri and other aristocratic lovers of freedom, he would not ultimately have shrunk from the result of his own equalizing doctrines; and, though zealous enough in lowering those above his |