It was a sincerity such as the falsest and the most hollow of men must express when stung to the quick; for hath not he, as well as a Jew, "eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions. Is he not fed with the same food, and hurt by the same weapons? If you prick him, does he not bleed? If you tickle him, does he not laugh? If you poison him, does he not die? And if you wrong him, does he not revenge?" Purpose, therefore, in its genuine simplicity, and quiet deep sincerity, was awanting in Byron's character. And this greatly accounts for the wreck which he became; and for that misery-a misery which was wonderful, passing the wo of man-which sat down upon his spirit. Many accounts have been given of his grief. Macaulay says that he was a spoiled child. Shelley declares—

"The thought that he was greater than his kind

Had struck, methought, his eagle spirit blind
By gazing at its own exceeding light."

But the plain prose and English of it lay in his union of intensity of power with the want of intensity of purpose. He was neither one thing nor yet another. Life with him was neither, on the one hand, an earnest single-eyed effort, nor was it, could it be, a mere display. He believed, and trembled as he believed, that it was a serious thing to die, but did not sufficiently, if at all, feel that it was as serious a thing to live. He would not struggle: he must shine; but could not be content with mere shining without struggle. And hence, ill at ease with himself, aimless and hopeless, "like the Cyclops-mad with blindness,” he turned to bay against society-man-and his Maker. And hence, amid all that he has said to the world-and said so eloquently, and said so mournfully, and said amid such wide, and silent, and profound attention-he has told it little save his own sad story.

We pass, secondly, to speak of the relation in which he stood to his age. The relations in which a man stands to

his age are perhaps threefold. He is either before it or behind it, or exactly on a level with it. He is either its forerunner; or he is dragged as a captive at its chariot wheels; or he walks calmly, and step for step, along with it. We behold in Milton the man before his age-not, indeed, in point of moral grandeur or mental power; for remember, his age was the age of the Puritans, the age of Hampden, Selden, Howe, Vane, and of Cromwell, who was a greater writer than Milton himself-only, it was with the sword that he wrote-and whose deeds were quite commensurate with Milton's words. But in point of liberality of sentiment and width of view, the poet strode across entire centuries. We see in Southey the man behind his age, who, indeed, in his youth, took a rash and rapid race in advance, but returned like a beaten dog, cowed, abashed, with downcast head, and tail between his legs, and remained, for the rest of his life, aloof from the great movements of society. We behold in Brougham one whom once the age was proud to claim as its child and champion, the express image of its bustling, restless, versatile, and onward character, and of whom we still at least say, with a sigh, he might have been the man of his time. In which of these relations, is it asked, did Byron stand to his age? We are forced to answer, in none of them. He was not before his age in anything-in opinion, or in feeling. He was not, in all or many things, disgracefully behind it; nor did he move with equal and measured step in its procession. He stood to the age in a most awkward and uncertain attitude. He sneered at its advancement, and he lent money, and ultimately lost his life, in attempting to promote it. He spoke with uniform contempt, and imitated with as uniform emulation, the masterpieces of its literature. He abused Wordsworth in public, and in private "rolled him as a sweet morsel under his tongue;" or rather, if you believe himself, took him as a drastic dose, to purify his bilious and unhappy nature,

by the strongest contrasted element that he could find. He often reviled and ridiculed revealed religion, and yet read the Bible more faithfully and statedly than most professed Christians-made up in superstition what he wanted in faith-had a devout horror at beginning his poems, undertaking his journeys, or paring his nails on a Friday --and had he lived, would probably have ended, like his own Giaour, as "brother Byron," with hair shirt, and iron-spiked girdle, in some Achaian or Armenian convent. He habitually trampled on, and seems sometimes to have really despised, the opinion of the public; and yet, in some points, felt it so keenly, that, says Ebenezer Elliot, "he would have gone into hysterics had a tailor laughed at him." And although, when the "Edinburgh Review” sought to crush him like a worm, he rose from the heel, a fiery, flying dragon; yet, to the assaults of the meaner creatures of the press, he was pervious all over, and allowed minnikin arrows, which were beneath his laughter, to rouse his rage. Absurd and ludicrous the spectacle of this Laocoon, covered from head to foot with the snakes of supernal vengeance, yet bearing their burden with deep agonised silence, starting and shrieking upon the application of a thorn, which the hand of some puny passing malignant had thrust into his foot. In one respect we grant that Byron was the spirit of the age; he was the representative of its wants, its weakness, its discontents, its dark unrest-but not of its aspirations, its widening charity, and its hopeful tendencies. His voice was the deep vague moan of the world's dream-his writhing anguish, the last struggle of its troubled slumber it has since awaked, or is awakening, and, "as a dream when one awakeneth," it is despising, too much despising, his image. He stood high yet helpless between the old and the new, and all the helpless and the hopeless rallied round to constitute him first magistrate over a city in flamessupreme ruler in a blasted and ruined realm. In one

thing he was certainly a prophet; namely, a prophet of evil. As misery was the secret sting of all his inspiration, it became the invariable matter of all his song. In some of his poems, you have misery contemplating; in others, misery weeping aloud; in others, misery revolving and reproducing the past; in others, misery bursting the confines of the world, as if in search of a wider hell than that in which it felt itself environed; in others, misery stopping to turn and rend its real or imaginary foes; and in others, misery breaking out into hollow, hopeless, and heartless laughter. (What a terrible thing is the laugh of the unhappy! It is the very "echo to the seat where sorrow is throned.") But in all, you have misery; and whether he returns the old thunder in a voice of kindred power and majesty, or sings an evening song with the grasshopper at his feet-smiles the smile of bitterness, or sheds the burning tears of anger-his voice still speaks of desolation, mourning, and wo; the vocabulary of grief labours under the demands of his melancholy genius; and never, never more, till this scene of tears and sighs be ended, shall we meet with a more authentic and profound expounder of the wretchedness of man. And as such we deem him to have done good service; first, because he who approaches toward the bottom of human wo, proves that it is not altogether bottomless, however deep; because, if human grief spring from human greatness, in unveiling the grief he is illustrating the grandeur of man; and, because, the writings of Byron have saved us, in this country, what in France has been so pernicious, "the literature of desperation:" they are a literature of desperation in themselves; they condense into one volume what in France has been diluted throughout many, and, consequently, our country has drained off at one gulp, and survived the experiment, the poison which our neighbours have been sipping for years to their deadly harm.

Thus, on the whole, we regard Byron neither as, in any

sense, a creator, nor wholly, as a creature of his period; but rather as a stranger entangled in the passing stream of its crowd, imperfectly adjusted to its customs, indifferently reconciled to its laws-among men, but not of them —a man of the world, but not a man of the age; and who has rather fallen furiously through it-spurning its heights, and seeking its depths--than left on it any deep or definite impression. Some men are buried and straightway forgotten-shovelled out of memory as soon as shovelled into the tomb. Others are buried, and from their graves, through the hands of ministering love, arise fragrant flowers and verdant branches, and thus are they, in a subordinate sense, "raised in glory." Others, again, lie down in the dust, and though no blossom or bough marks the spot, and though the timid shun it at evening-tides as a spot unblessed yet, forgotten it can never be, for there lies the record of a great guilty life extinct, and the crown of crime sits silent and shadowy on the tombstone. This is Byron's memorial in the age. But, as even on Nero's tomb 66 some hand unseen strewed flowers," and as "nothing dies but something mourns," let us lay a frail garland upon the sepulchre of a ruin-itself a desolation-and say Requiescat in pace, as we hurry on.

We come, thirdly, to speak of the leading features of his artistic execution, and the materials which his genius used. And here there are less mingled feelings to embarrass the critical contemplator. Strong, direct intellect, descriptive force, and personal passion, seem the main elements of Byron's poetical power. He sees clearly, he selects judiciously for effect from among the points he does see, and he paints them with a pencil dipped in his own fiery heart. He was the last representative of the English character of mind. His lordly independence and high-spiritedness; his fearless avowal of his prejudices, however narrow, and passions, however coarse; his constant clearness and decision of tone and of style; his manly vigour and direct-.

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