may with greater propriety be called by a softer name-a milder term, and perhaps a juster, would be his love of fame. He was exorbitantly desirous of being the sole object of interest: whether in the circle in which he was living, or in the wider sphere of the world, he could bear no rival; he could not tolerate the person who attracted attention from himself; he instantly became animated with a bitter jealousy, and hated, for the time, every greater or more celebrated man than himself: he carried his jealousy up even to Buonaparte; and it was the secret of his contempt of Wellington. It was dangerous for his friends to rise in the world if they valued his friendship more than their own fame-he hated them.

It cannot be said that he was vain of any talent, accomplishment, or other quality in particular; it was neither more nor less than a morbid and voracious appetite for fame, admiration, public applause: proportionably he dreaded the public censure; and though from irritation and spite, and sometimes through design, he acted in some respects as if he despised the opinion of the world, no man was ever more alive to it.

The English newspapers talked freely of him; and he thought the English public did the same; and for this reason he feared, or hated, or fancied that he hated England: in fact, as far as this one cause went, he did hate England, but the balance of love in its favour was immense; all his views were directed to England; he never rode a mile, wrote a line, or held a conversation, in which England and the English public were not the goal to which he was looking, whatever scorn he might have on his tongue.

Before he went to Greece, he imagined thet he had grown very unpopular, and even infamous, in England; when he left Murray, engaged in the Liberal, which was unsuccessful, published with the Hunts, he fancied, and doubtless was told so, by some of his aristocratic friends, that he had become low, that the better English thought him out of fashion and voted him vulgar; and that for the licentiousness of

Don Juan, or for vices either practised or suspected, the public had morally outlawed him. This was one of the determining causes which led him to Greece, that he might retrieve himself.

He thought that his name coupled with the Greek cause would sound well at home. When he arrived at Cephalonia, and found that he was in good odour with the authorities,—that the regiment stationed there, and other English residents in the island, receiv ed him with the highest consideration, he was gratified to a most extravagant pitch; he talked of it to the last with a perseverance and in a manner which showed how anxious his fears had been that he was lost with the English people.

They who have not resided abroad are very little aware how difficult it is to keep up with the state of public opinion at home. Letters and news papers, which are rarely seen even by the richer traveller on account of the immense expense of their transmission, scarcely do anything more than tantalize the spirit, or administer food to the imagination. We gather the state of public opinion by ten thousand little circumstances which cannot, or only a few of which can, be commi nicated through any other channel of information. While on the spot, absence of calumny, or the fact of not hearing any thing disagreeable, is a proof of its non-existence; abroad, on the contrary, silence is ominous; the fancy is at work, and torments a sensitive man, whose reputation is public property, in a manner of which it is difficult to form an adequate concep tion: an approach is made to it by wilful seclusion even within the four seas; hence the irritability of Wordsworth; hence also, in a less degree, that of Southey, who mixes a little more with the world.

Lord Byron cannot be said to have been personally vain in any extraordinary degree, that is, not much more than men usually are. He knew the power of his countenance, and he took care that it should always be displayed to the greatest advantage. never failed to appear remarkable: and no person, whether from the

He

in Greece she would gladly have joined him; but his Lordship had changed. Then, again, Greece was a land of adventure, bustle, struggle, sensation, and excitement, where the inhabitants have beautiful forms, and dress in romantic habits, and dwell in the most picturesque country of the world; and Lord Byron, as he said himself, had "an oriental twist in his imagination." He knew that the Greeks looked up to him as, what he really was, one of their greatest regenerators; he was aware that his money and rank, would give him unlimited power, influence, and respect; all of which he dearly loved. Then again, if any man ever sympathized deeply with bravery suffering in a generous cause, it was Lord Byron; and when he was roused, in moments of excitement, this sympathy was a violently propelling and a very virtuous motive. These and other secondary considerations led him to Greece, to sacrifice much of his personal comforts, much of his property, his health, and his life.

No two men were ever more unlike than Lord Byron excited and Lord Byron in the ordinary state of calm. His friends about him used to call it inspiration; and when men of their stamp talk about inspiration, there must no common change take place. When excited, his sentiments were noble, his ideas grand or beautiful, his language rich and enthusiastic, his views elevated, and all his feelings of that disinterested and martyr-like cast which marks the great mind. When in the usual dull mood in which almost every body wearies their friends nine hours out of the ten, his ideas were gross, his language coarse, his sentiments not mean certainly, but of a low and sensual kind; his mood sneering and satirical, unless in a very good humour, which indeed, he often, I may say generally, was. This is, however, the wrong side of the picture in Lord Byron-he may be said here to be taken at the worst. Without being what I have called excited, his conversation was often very delightful, though almost always polluted by grossness-grossness of the very

His letters are charming; he never wrote them with the idea of "The Letters of the Right Hon. Lord Byron, in 6 vols. 12mo." before his eyes, as unfortunately our great men must now almost necessarily do. The public are so fond of this kind of reading, and so justly too, that there is great reason to fear that it will consume what it feeds on. Few things are so charming as to see a great man without all the paraphernalia of his greatness, without his being armed cap-apie for public contest, when every point is guarded, and every motion studied: when a man of reputation presents himself to the notice of the world, he must pretend to know every thing, or he will have credit for nothing-be must assume the air of infallibility, or the meanest creature that can read will discover that he is full of error; he must be supposed to have examined the subject in all its bearings, he must have consulted every authority, he must know what every body has said or thought previously on the matter, and he must anticipate what they can possibly say or think in future, or he will be voted a shallow writer, without information, who has produced a work of no value. Then as to style, it must be the abstract of lan guage-it must be impersonal-unindividual-and just such as a literary machine which had the power of grinding thoughts might be supposed to utter. In short, the writer is every

moment afraid of either committing himself or his friends; he is on his good behaviour; and natural freedom, grace, and truth, are out of the question. The writer for the public is as much unlike the real man as the traveller in a stage coach or as the guest at a public ball or dinner is like the lively, careless, rattling, witty, good-natured, fanciful, pleasant creature, at his or her fire-side, among old friends, who know too much of the whole life and character to be alarmed at any little sally, and who are satisfied with such knowledge as their friend possesses, without requiring that he should know every thing. Lord Byron's letters are the models of a species of composition which should be written without an eye to any models. His fancy kindled on paper; he touches no subject in a common every-day way; the reader smiles all through, and loves the writer at the end; longs for his society, and admires his happy genius and his amiable disposition. Lord Byron's letters are like what his conversation was-but better-he had more undisturbed leisure to let his fancy ripen in; he could point his wit with more security, and his irritable temper met with no opposition on

paper.

Lord Byron was not ill-tempered nor quarrelsome, but still he was very difficult to live with; he was capricious, full of humours, apt to be of fended, and wilful. When Mr. Hobhouse and he travelled in Greece together, they were generally a mile asunder, and though some of his friends lived with him off and on a long time, (Trelawney, for instance,) it was not without serious trials of temper, patience, and affection. He could make a great point often about the least and most trifling thing imaginable, and adhere to his purpose with a pertinacity truly remarkable, and almost unaccountable. A love of victory might sometimes account for little disputes and petty triumphs, otherwise inexplicable, and always unworthy of his great genius; but, as I have said, he was only a great genius now and then, when excited; when not so, he was sometimes little in his conduct,

and in his writings dull, or totally des titute of all powers of production. He was very good-natured; and when asked to write a song, or a copy of verses in an album, or an inscription, for so poets are plagued, he would generally attempt to comply, but he seldom succeeded in doing any thing; and when he did, he generally gave birth to such Grub-street doggerel as his friends were ashamed of, and, it is to be hoped, charitably put into the fire. When, on the contrary, in a state of enthusiasm, he wrote with great facility, and corrected very little. He used to boast of an indifference about his writings which he did not feel, and would remark with pleasure that he never saw them in print, and never met with any body that did not know more about them than himself.

He left very little behind him. Of late he had been too much occupied with the Greeks to write, and, indeed, had turned his attention very much to action, as has been observed. Don Juan he certainly intended to continue; and, I believe, that the real reason for his holding so many conferences with Dr. Kennedy in Cephalonia was, that he might master the slang of a religious sect, in order to hit off the character with more veri-similitude.

His religious principles were by no means fixed; habitually, like most of his class, he was an unbeliever; at times, however, he relapsed into Christianity, and, in his interviews with Dr. Kennedy, maintained the part of a Unitarian. Like all men whose imaginations are much stronger than the reasoning power-the guiding and determining faculty-he was in danger of falling into fanaticism, and some of his friends who knew him well used to predict that he would die a Methodist; a consummation by no means impossible.

From the same cause, the preponderance of the imagination, there might have been some ground for the fear which beset his later moments that he should go mad. The immediate cause of this fear was, the deep impression which the fate of Swift had made upon him. He read the life of