roused in him, and one that tended, perhaps, even more fatally than any yet mentioned, to sully and, for a time, bring down to earth the romance of his character, was the course of life to which, outrunning even the licence of his youth, he abandoned himself at Venice. From this, as from his earlier excesses, the timely warning of disgust soon rescued him; and the connexion with Madame Guiccioli which followed, and which, however much to be reprehended, had in it all of marriage that his real marriage wanted, seemed to place, at length, within reach of his affectionate spirit that union and sympathy for which, through life, it had thirsted. But the treasure came too late ;-the pure poetry of the feeling had vanished; and those tears he shed so passionately in the garden at Bologna flowed less, perhaps, from the love which he felt at that moment, than from the saddening consciousness how differently he could have felt formerly. It was, indeed, wholly beyond the power, even of an imagination like his, to go on investing with its own ideal glories a sentiment which,-more from daring and vanity than from any other impulse, -he had taken such pains to tarnish and debase in his own eyes. Accordingly, instead of being able, as once, to elevate and embellish all that interested him, to make an idol of every passing creature of his fancy, and mistake the form of love, which he so often conjured up, for its substance, he now degenerated into the wholly opposite and perverse error of depreciating and making light of what, intrinsically, he valued, and, as the reader has seen, throwing slight and mockery upon a tie in which it was evident some of the best feelings of his nature were wrapped up. That foe to all enthusiasm and romance, the habit of ridicule, had, in proportion as he exchanged the illusions for the realities of life, gained further empire over him; and how far it had, at this time, encroached upon the loftier and fairer regions of his mind may be seen in the pages of Don Juan,-that diversified arena, on which the two Genii, good and evil, that governed his thoughts, hold, with alternate triumph, their ever powerful combat. Even this, too, this vein of mockery,-in the excess to which, at last, he carried it, was but another result of the shock his proud mind had received from those events that had cast him off, branded and heartstricken, from country and from home. As he himself touchingly says, And if I laugh at any mortal thing, 'Tis that I may not weep.' - This laughter, which, in such temperaments, is the near neighbour of tears,-served as a diversion to him from more painful vents of bitterness; and the same philosophical calculation which made the poet of melancholy, Young, declare that he preferred laughing at the world to being angry with it,' led Lord Byron also to settle upon the same conclusion; and to feel, in the misanthropic views he was inclined to take of mankind, that mirth often saved him the pain of hate. That, with so many drawbacks upon all generous effusions of sentiment, he should still have preserved so much of his native tenderness and ardour as is conspicuous, through all disguises, in his unquestionable love for Madame Guiccioli, and in the still more undoubted zeal with which he now entered, heart and soul, into the great cause of human freedom, whereor by whomsoever asserted *,-only shows soever * Among his Detached Thoughts' I find this general passion for how rich must have been the original stores of sensibility and enthusiasm which even a career such as his could so little chill or exhaust. Most consoling, too, is it to reflect that the few latter years of his life should have been thus visited with a return of that poetic lustre, which, though it never had ceased to surround the bard, had but too much faded away from the character of the man; and that while Love, -reprehensible as it was, but still Love,-had the credit of rescuing him from the only errors that disgraced his maturer years, for Liberty was reserved the proud, but mournful triumph of calling the last stage of his glorious course her own, and lighting him, amidst the sympathies of the world, to his grave. Having endeavoured, in this comparison between his present and former self, to account, by what I consider to be their true causes, for the new phenomena which his character, at this period, exhibited, I shall now lay before the reader the Journal by which these remarks were more immediately suggested, and from which I fear they will be thought to have too long detained him. liberty thus strikingly expressed. After saying, in reference to his own choice of Venice as a place of residence, I remembered General Lud'low's domal inscription, " Omne solum forti patria," and sat down free in a country which had been one of slavery for centuries,' he adds, 'But there is no freedom, even for masters, in the midst of slaves. It makes my blood boil to see the thing. I sometimes wish that I was the owner of Africa, to do at once what Wilberforce will do in time, viz., sweep slavery from her deserts, and look on upon the first dance of their free⚫ dom. As to political slavery, so general, it is men's own fault: if they will 'be slaves, let them! Yet it is but "a word and a blow." See how England formerly, France, Spain, Portugal, America, Switzerland, freed themselves! There is no one instance of a long contest in which men did not triumph over systems. If Tyranny misses her first spring, she is cowardly as the tiger, and retires to be hunted.' EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY OF LORD BYRON, 1821. 'Ravenna, January 4th, 1821. Let me begin a "A sudden thought strikes me." 'Journal once more. The last I kept was in Switzerland, in record of a tour made in the Bernese Alps, which I made to send to my sister in 1816, and I suppose that she has it still, for she wrote to me that 'she was pleased with it. Another, and longer, I kept ' in 1813-1814, which I gave to Thomas Moore in the same year. This morning I gat me up late, as usual-weather 'bad-bad as England-worse. The snow of last week 'melting to the sirocco of to-day, so that there were 'two d-d things at once. Could not even get to ride on horseback in the forest. Stayed at home all the morning-looked at the fire-wondered when the 'post would come. Post came at the Ave Maria, ' instead of half-past one o'clock, as it ought. Galignani's Messengers, six in number-a letter from ⚫ Faenza, but none from England. Very sulky in consequence (for there ought to have been letters), and 'ate in consequence a copious dinner; for when I am ' vexed, it makes me swallow quicker-but drank very ' little. 6 I was out of spirits-read the papers-thought 'what fame was, on reading, in a case of murder, that “Mr. Wych, grocer, at Tunbridge, sold some bacon, 6 flour, cheese, and, it is believed, some plums, to some gipsy woman accused. He had on his counter (I quote faithfully) a book, the Life of Pamela, which 'he was tearing for waste paper, &c. &c. In the 'cheese was found, &c., and a leaf of Pamela wrapt 'round the bacon." What would Richardson, the vainest and luckiest of living authors (i. e., while alive)-he who, with Aaron Hill, used to prophesy ' and chuckle over the presumed fall of Fielding (the prose Homer of human nature) and of Pope (the most 'beautiful of poets)-what would he have said, could ' he have traced his pages from their place on the 'French prince's toilets (see Boswell's Johnson) to the grocer's counter and the gipsy-murderess's • bacon !!! 'What would he have said? what can anybody say, save what Solomon said long before us? After all, it is but passing from one counter to another, from the bookseller's to the other tradesman'sgrocer or pastry-cook. For my part, I have met with 'most poetry upon trunks; so that I am apt to con'sider the trunk-maker as the sexton of authorship. 'Wrote five letters in about half an hour, short and savage, to all my rascally correspondents. Carriage " came. Heard the news of three murders at Faenza ' and Forli-a carabinier, a smuggler, and an attorney '-all last night. The two first in a quarrel, the latter by premeditation. - Three weeks ago-almost a month-the 7th it was -I picked up the commandant, mortally wounded, 'out of the street; he died in my house; assassins unknown, but presumed political. His brethren wrote from Rome last night to thank me for having 'assisted him in his last moments. Poor fellow! it 'was a pity; he was a good soldier, but imprudent. It was eight in the evening when they killed him. "We heard the shot; my servants and I ran out, and found him expiring, with five wounds, two whereof 'mortal-by slugs they seemed. I examined him, but ' did not go to the dissection next morning. Carriage at 8 or so went to visit La Contessa |