lecting with what assiduity, throughout the whole of the poet's career, every new rising of his genius was watched from the great observatories of Criticism, and the ever-changing varieties of its course and splendour tracked out and recorded with a degree of skill and minuteness which has left but little for succeeding observers to discover. It is, moreover, into the character and conduct of Lord Byron, as a man, not distinct from, but forming, on the contrary, the best illustration of his character, as a writer, that it has been the more immediate purpose of these volumes to inquire; and if, in the course of them, any satisfactory clue has been afforded to those anomalies, moral and intellectual, which his life exhibited,-still more, should it have been the effect of my humble labours to clear away some of those mists that hang round my friend, and show him, in most respects, as worthy of love as he was, in all, of admiration, then will the chief and sole aim of this work have been accomplished.

Having devoted to this object so large a portion of my own share of these pages, and, yet more fairly, enabled the world to form a judgment for itself, by placing the man, in his own person, and without disguise, before all eyes, there would seem to remain now but an easy duty in summing up the various points of his character, and, out of the features, already separately described, combining one complete portrait. The task, however, is by no means so easy as it may appear. There are few characters in which a near acquaintance does not enable us to discover some one leading principle or passion consistent enough in its operations to be taken confidently into account in any estimate of the disposition in which they are found. Like those points in the human face,

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or figure, to which all its other proportions are referrible, there is in most minds some one governing influence, from which chiefly,-though, of course, biassed on some occasions by others,-all its various impulses and tendencies will be found to radiate. In Lord Byron, however, this sort of pivot of character was almost wholly wanting. Governed as he was at different moments by totally different passions, and impelled sometimes, as during his short access of parsimony in Italy, by springs of action never before developed in his nature, in him this simple mode of tracing character to its sources must be often wholly at fault; and if, as is not impossible, in trying to solve the strange variances of his mind, I should myself be found to have fallen into contradictions and inconsistencies, the extreme difficulty of analysing, without dazzle or bewilderment, such an unexampled complication of qualities must be admitted as my excuse.

So various, indeed, and contradictory were his attributes, both moral and intellectual, that he may be pronounced to have been not one, but many; nor would it be any great exaggeration of the truth to say, that out of the mere partition of the properties of his single mind a plurality of characters, all different and all vigorous, might have been furnished. It was this multiform aspect exhibited by him that led the world, during his short wondrous career, to compare him with that medley host of personages, almost all differing from each other, which he thus playfully enumerates in one of his Journals:

'I have been thinking over, the other day, on the ' various comparisons, good or evil, which I have seen published of myself in different journals, English and foreign. This was suggested to me by acci

'dentally turning over a foreign one lately,- for I 'have made it a rule latterly never to search for anything of the kind, but not to avoid the perusal, if presented by chance.

To begin, then I have seen myself compared, personally or poetically, in English, French, German (as interpreted to me), Italian, and Portuguese, ' within these nine years, to Rousseau, Goethe, Young, Aretine, Timon of Athens, Dante, Petrarch, "an alabaster vase, lighted up within," Satan, Shakspeare, Buonaparte, Tiberius, Eschylus, Sophocles, Euri'pides, Harlequin, the Clown, Sternhold and Hopkins, to the phantasmagoria, to Henry the Eighth, to Chenier, to Mirabeau, to young R. Dallas (the schoolboy), to Michael Angelo, to Raphael, to a petit'maître, to Diogenes, to Childe Harold, to Lara, to 'the Count in Beppo, to Milton, to Pope, to Dryden, 'to Burns, to Savage, to Chatterton, to "oft have I heard of thee, my Lord Biron," in Shakspeare, to 'Churchill the poet, to Kean the actor, to Alfieri, &c.

' &c. &c.

The likeness to Alfieri was asserted very seriously by an Italian who had known him in his younger days. It of course related merely to our apparent personal dispositions. He did not assert it to me (for we were not then good friends), but in society. The object of so many contradictory comparisons ' must probably be like something different from them all; but what that is, is more than I know, or anybody else."

It would not be uninteresting, were there either space or time for such a task, to take a review of the names of note in the preceding list, and show in how many points, though differing so materially among

themselves, it might be found that each presented a striking resemblance to Lord Byron. We have seen, for instance, that wrongs and sufferings were, through life, the main sources of Byron's inspiration. Where the hoof of the critic struck, the fountain was first disclosed; and all the tramplings of the world afterwards but forced out the stream stronger and brighter. The same obligations to misfortune, the same debt to the oppressor's wrong,' for having wrung out from bitter thoughts the pure essence of his genius, was due no less deeply by Dante :-' quum illam sub amarâ co'gitatione excitatam, occulti divinique ingenii vim 'exacuerit et inflammarit*.'

In that contempt for the world's opinion, which led Dante to exclaim, Lascia dir le genti,' Lord Byron also bore a strong resemblance to that poet,-though far more, it must be confessed, in profession than reality. For, while scorn for the public voice was on his lips, the keenest sensitiveness to its every breath was in his heart; and, as if every feeling of his nature was to have some painful mixture in it, together with the pride of Dante which led him to disdain public opinion, he combined the susceptibility of Petrarch, which placed him shrinkingly at its mercy.

His agreement, in some other features of character, with Petrarch, I have already had occasion to remarkt; and if it be true, as is often surmised, that

* Paulus Jovius.-Bayle, too, says of him, il fit entrer plus de feu et plus de force dans ses livres qu'il n'y en eût mis s'il avoit joui d'une condition plus tranquille.'

Some passages in Foscolo's Essay on Petrarch may be applied, with equal truth, to Lord Byron.-For instance, It is hardly possible with Petrarch to write a sentence without pourtraying himself - Petrarch, 'allured by the idea that his celebrity would magnify into importance all the ordinary occurrences of his life, satisfied the curiosity of the world,' &c. &c.—and again, with still more striking applicability,• In Petrarch's letters, as well as in his Poems and Treatises, we always

Byron's want of a due reverence for Shakspeare arose from some latent and hardly conscious jealousy of that poet's fame, a similar feeling is known to have existed in Petrarch towards Dante; and the same reason assigned for it, that from the living he had nothing to fear, while before the shade of Dante he might have reason to feel humbled,—is also not a little applicable in the case of Lord Byron.

*

Between the dispositions and habits of Alfieri and those of the noble poet of England, no less remarkable coincidences might be traced; and the sonnet in which the Italian dramatist professes to paint his own character contains, in one comprehensive line, a portrait of the versatile author of Don Juan,

'Or stimandome Achille ed or Tersite.'

By the extract just given from his Journal, it will be perceived that, in Byron's own opinion, a character which, like his, admitted of so many contradictory comparisons, could not be otherwise than wholly undefinable itself. It will be found, however, on reflection, that this very versatility, which renders it so difficult to fix, 'ere it change,' the fairy fabric of his character is, in itself, the true clue through all that fabric's mazes, is in itself the solution of whatever was most dazzling in his might or startling in his levity, of all that most attracted and repelled, whether in his life or

identify the author with the man, who felt himself irresistibly impelled 'to develop his own intense feelings. Being endowed with almost all the noble, and with some of the paltry passions of our nature, and having never attempted to conceal them, he awakens us to reflection upon ourselves while we contemplate in him a being of our own species, yet different from any other, and whose originality excites even more sympathy than admiration.'

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* Il Petrarca poteva credere candidamente ch'ei non pativa d'invidia ⚫ solamente, perché fra tutti i viventi non v'era chi non s'arretrasse per cedergli il passo alla prima gloria, ch'ei non poteva sentirsi umiliato, 'fuorché dall' ombra di Dante.'