not for the sake of improving it, or in the worship of a new and higher principle, but in the mere assertion and worship of their own strength, by which alone they seek to crash while they dazzle the society they despise. They are themselves crashed by Fate; the ever-advancing surge of humanity overwhelms even them; and Byron, who has first fascinated us, as he was himself fascinated by these Titanic types, destroys them on a sudden, and inscribes upon their tomb a curse—the curse which hangs over exceptional gifts, when abused to the aggrandizement of the one, rather than used for the advancement of all. This instinct in Byron which finds its poetic expression (frequently, as we have said, unconsciously) in his heroes, reveals itself in a thousand ways in all his poetry, and is shown in the unceasing war he wages against aristocratic tendencies and prejudices in every shape. Passages like the following are of constant recurrence in his letters, journals, &c.:—"The newspapers will tell you all that is to be told of emperors, &c. They have dined, supped, and shown their flat faces in all thoroughfares, and several saloons. . . . News come! The powers mean to war with the peoples. . . . The king-times are fast finishing: there will be blood shed like water, and tears like mist, but the peoples will conquer in the end; I shall not live to see it, but I foresee it." It is this forecasting sympathy with the struggles in which they are still engaged, which causes him to be esteemed on the continent as the poet of a new era, and which makes him eminently the poet of the people, even in England. They do not, it is true, understand him; but they feel that he feels with them and for them, and they love him. This also explains the intense interest with which Byron watched the career of Napoleon; his upbraiding him, on his seizure of empire, as "the hero sunk into a king," shows that it was not merely the great military genius, but the revolutionary chief that he had hailed in him. To these popular sympathies, so powerfully and so boldly expressed, must be attributed the excessive and exaggerated rancour exhibited against him by whoever shared in or profited by privileges whose doom he prophesied. But, moreover, the long-sufferings and privations caused by the war, and the still recent crimes and excesses of the French revolution, had filled England with horror and disgust; save an enlightened minority, the English of Lord Byron's day regarded the struggle for freedom on the continent as a mere bloody chaos of anarchical passions, and such in truth it appeared. But Byron, with the prophetic instinct of genius, recognized in the storm of revolution that burst over Europe the finger of God; and while the majority of his countrymen, long accustomed to see the continent shrouded in the darkness of corruption-made law, viewed the comet-like career of Napoleon merely as a blighting scourge threatening even their own island, he saw in him an avenging thunderbolt which purified the infected atmosphere around the thrones it blasted on its passage. Sentiments so distasteful to the English mind go far to explain the obloquy with which our poet was assailed, although the secret was probably quite as unrecognized by his assailants as uncomprehended by him.—The gloomy and morbid scepticism into which Lord Byron occasionally fell, may be attributed in a great measure to the unjust hatred of his countrymen acting upon a spirit already deeply saddened by a 'desolate youth, unhappy attachment, and an ill-judged and ill-fated marriage. All who knew him intimately have testified to the natural gentleness and affectionateness of his disposition; but his very virtues appear from unfortunate circumstances to have been a source of suffering to him. The great Goethe has said of him that he was "inspired by the genius of Pain." "A disposition on his own side to form strong attachments, and a yearning after affection in return, were at once the feeling and the want that formed the dream and torment of his existence. We have seen with what passionate enthusiasm he threw himself into his boyish friendships. The all-absorbing and unsuccessful love that followed, was, if I may so say, the agony, without being the death of this unsated desire; disappointment of this feeling met him at the very threshold of life. . . . . His mother either rudely repelled his affection, or capriciously trifled with it. . . . . In all the relations of the heart his thirst after affection was thwarted," while even "in his first literary efforts disappointment and mortification awaited him." Then followed his unhappy marriage, and the burst of calumny and outrage which drove him into exile. He left England in April, 1816, not again to return. He could never quite forgive his country, but neither could he forget her, nor while adapting himself to new circumstances, did he ever cast off his own nationality. He went by Flanders and the Rhine to Switzerland, and en route composed the "Third Canto of Childe Harold:" the "Prisoner of Chillon" was written at Ouchy, on the lake of Geneva. At Diodati, on the same lake, he wrote the "Dream," "Prometheus," &c.; it was here that he became acquainted with Shelley, and during a tour made at this time among the Bernese Alps, he commenced "Manfred." Writing of this journey, he says:—"In all this the recollection of bitterness, and more especially of recent and home desolation, which must accompany me through life, have preyed upon me here; and neither the music of the shepherd, nor the crashing of the avalanche, nor the torrent, the mountain, the glacier, the forest, nor the cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight upon my heart, nor enabled me to lose my own wretched identity in the majesty, and the power, and the glory, around, above, and beneath me." From Geneva he went to Venice, where—probably from the culpable weakness of endeavouring to drown this cry of despair and bitterness sounding from the depths of his wounded spirit—he sank for a time into a course of reckless dissipation, utterly unworthy his nature and his genius. "Manfred," which is the embodiment of anguish and despair, and "Beppo," the expression of his scorn of professed and hollow morality, were written during this period. "Don Juan," too, was commenced. But even here his better self did not quite forsake him; the fourth canto of "Childe Harold," with its magnificent curse of forgiveness, is also of this date. He seems to have been roused from subjection to various and degrading passions by his fixed attachment to the Countess Guiccioli, and by his entering heart and soul into the cause of the Italian Carbonari. He enrolled himself of their number, subscribed largely to their funds, concealed their arms in his house, and shared in every way their perils and their hopes. In 1819 he removed to Ravenna, where he wrote "The Prophecy of Dante," "Francesca da Rimini," &c. In 1820 the Countess Guiccioli was formally separated from her husband; from which period Lord Byron lived with her until his departure for Greece. He also continued in active sympathy with the Italian liberals, though well aware of the danger to which he thereby exposed himself. His letters and journals show how completely he had identified himself with their cause: "I sometimes think, if the Italians don't rise, of coming to England. . . . I have lived in the heart of their houses . . . have seen and become (pars magna fui) a portion of their hopes, and fears, and passions. . . . It is no great matter, supposing that Italy could be liberated, who or what is sacrificed. . . . It is a great object, the very poetry of politics: only think, a free Italy!!! . . . If this country could be freed, what could be too great for the accomplishment of that desire, for the extinction of the sighs of ages? . . . You neither know nor dream of the consequences of this war. It is a war of men with monarchs. . . . What it is with you English you do not know, for ye sleep. What it is with us here I know, for it is before, and around, and within us. . . . I am but as one of the many waves that must break and die upon the shore, before the tide they help to advance can reach its full mark. . . . What signifies self, if a single spark of that which would be worthy of the past can be bequeathed unquenchably to the future," &c., &c. On the failure of the Italian insurrection of 1821, Lord Byron removed to Pisa. During this year he wrote "Cain," the "Vision of Judgment," "Heaven and Earth," &c., &c., besides continuing "Don Juan." In 1822 he went with the Countess Guiccioli and her brother to Genoa. The delight with which Byron hailed, in the Greek revolution, the awakening of the spirit he had so often invoked, may be inferred from the energy with which, when the continuance of the struggle had convinced him the Greeks were in earnest, he prepared to assist them. He sent help in medical stores and gunpowder; and after a severe struggle, occasioned by the pain of parting with the Countess Guiccioli, and the gloomiest forebodings that he should never return to her, he decided to start himself, and throw the weight of his personal influence, his counsels, and his whole fortune into the scale. The friends who knew him at Genoa agree in declaring, that he went to Greece as one fulfilling, at a great sacrifice, a solemn duty. "He was always saying," adds Mᵐᵉ. Guiccioli, "that a man ought to do something more for society than write verses." On the 14th June he sailed from Genoa, and reached Argastoli in December. Everywhere he was hailed as a deliverer.
