In this unequalled series of fictions, the author's power of bringing near and making palpable to us the remote and historical, whether of persons, places, or events, has something in common with that of Shakespeare, as shown in his historical dramas. Scott was careless in the construction of his plots. He wrote with great rapidity, and aimed at picturesque effect rather than at logical coherency. His powerful imagination carried him away so vehemently, that the delight he must have felt in developing the humors and adventures of one of those inimitable persons he had invented, sometimes left him no space for the elaboration of the pre-arranged intrigue. His style, though always easy and animated, is far from being careful or elaborate. Scotticisms will be met with in almost every chapter. Description, whether of scenery, incident, or personal appearance, is very abundant in his works; but few of his readers will be found to complain of his luxuriance in this respect, for it has filled his pages with bright and vivid pictures. His sentiments are invariably pure, manly, and elevated; and the spirit of the true gentleman is seen as clearly in his deep sympathy with the virtues of the poor and humble, as in the knightly fervor with which he paints the loftier feelings of the educated classes. In the delineation of character, as well as in the painting of external nature, he faithfully reflects the surface. There is no profound analysis of passion in his novels. He simply sets before us so brightly, so vividly, all that is necessary to give a distinct idea, that his images remain in the memory.

CHAPTER XXV.

BYRON, MOORE, SHELLEY, KEATS, LEIGH HUNT, LANDOR, HOOD, BROWNING.

LORD BYRON.

"Never had any writer so vast a command of the whole eloquence of scorn, misanthropy, and despair.". ."-T. B. Macaulay.

"I found Lord Byron in the highest degree courteous, and even kind. We met for an hour or two almost daily in Mr. Murray's drawing-room, and found a great deal to say to each other. His reading did not seem to me to have been very extensive, either in poetry or history. Having the advantage of him in that respect, and possessing a good competent share of such reading as is little read, I was sometimes able to put under his eye objects which had for him the interest of novelty."-Walter Scott.

"Byron's poetry is great-great-it makes him truly great; he has not so much greatness in himself."-Thomas Campbell.

"To this day English critics are unjust to him. If ever there was a violent and madly sensitive soul, but incapable of being otherwise; ever agitated, but in an enclosure without issue; predisposed to poetry by its innate fire, but limited by its natural barriers to a single kind of poetry-it was Byron's."-H. A. Taine.

THE

HE influence exerted by Byron on the taste and sentiment of Europe has not yet passed away, and, though far from being so pervading as it once was, it is not likely to be ever effaced. He called himself, in one of his poems, "the grand Napoleon of the realms of rhyme;" and there is some similarity between the suddenness and splendor of his literary career, and the meteoric rise and domination of the First Bonaparte. They were both, in their respective departments, the offspring of revolution; and both, after reigning with absolute power for some time, were deposed from their supremacy. Their reigns will leave traces in the political, and in the literary history of the nine

teenth century. George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788– 1824) (264-277), was born in London, and was the son of an unprincipled profligate and of a Scottish heiress. His mother had a temper so passionate and uncontrolled that, in its capricious alternations of fondness and violence, she seemed insane. Her dowry was speedily dissipated by her worthless husband, and she, with her boy, was obliged to live for several years in comparative poverty. He was about eleven years old when the death of his granduncle, an eccentric and misanthropic recluse, made him heir-presumptive to the baronial title of one of the most ancient aristocratic houses in England. With the title, he inherited large, though embarrassed estates, and the noble picturesque residence of Newstead Abbey, near Nottingham. He was sent first to Harrow School, and afterwards to Trinity College, Cambridge. At college he became notorious for the irregularities of his conduct. He was a greedy though desultory reader; and his imagination was especially attracted to Oriental history and travels.

While at Cambridge, in his twentieth year, Byron made his first literary attempt, in the publication of a small volume of fugitive poems entitled Hours of Idleness, by Lord Byron, a Minor. An unfavorable criticism of this work in the Edinburgh Review threw him into a frenzy of rage. He instantly set about taking his revenge in the satire, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, in which he involved in one common storm of invective, not only his enemies of the Edinburgh Review, but almost all the literary men of the day, Walter Scott, Moore, and many others, from whom he had received no provocation whatever. He soon became ashamed of his unreasoning violence; tried, but vainly, to suppress the poem; and, in after life, became the friend and sincere admirer of some whom he had lampooned. Byron now went abroad to travel, and filled his mind with the picturesque life and scenery of Greece, Turkey, and the

East, accumulating those stores of character and description which he poured forth with such royal splendor in his poems. The first two cantos of Childe Harold took the public by storm, and at once placed the young poet at the summit of social and literary popularity. "I awoke one morning," he says, "and found myself famous." These cantos were followed in rapid succession by The Giaour, (268, 269), The Bride of Abydos (270), The Corsair (271), and Lara. Scott had drawn his material from feudal and Scottish life; Byron broke up new ground in describing the manners, scenery, and wild passions of the East and of Greece-a region as picturesque as that of his rival, as well known to him by experience, and as new and fresh to the public he addressed. Returning to England in the full blaze of his dawning fame, the poet became the lion of the day. His life was passed in fashionable dissipation. He married Miss Milbanke, a lady of fortune; but the union was an unhappy one. In about a year Lady Byron suddenly quitted her husband. Her reasons for taking this step will ever remain a mystery. Deeply wounded by the scandal of this separation, the poet again left England; and thenceforth his life was passed uninterruptedly on the Continent, in Switzerland, in Italy, and in Greece, where he solaced his embittered spirit with misanthropical attacks upon all that his countrymen held sacred, and gradually plunged deeper and deeper into a slough of sensuality and vice. While at Geneva he produced the third canto of Childe Harold, The Prisoner of Chillon (273), Manfred (274), and The Lament of Tasso. Between 1818 and 1821 he was residing at Venice and Ravenna; and was writing Mazeppa, the first five cantos of Don Juan, and most of his tragedies, as Marino Faliero, Sardanapalus, The Two Foscari, Werner, Cain, and The Deformed Transformed. In many of these poems the influence of Shelley's literary manner and philosophical tenets is traceable. At this time he was grossly dissipated,