and
representative of the Revolution, in poesy, as another great man of the
age, Napoleon, was in statesmanship and warfare. Without going the full
length of this notion, it will, at least, be conceded, that the free
loose which had been given to all the passions and energies of the human
mind, in the great struggle of that period, together with the constant
spectacle of such astounding vicissitudes as were passing, almost daily,
on the theatre of the world, had created, in all minds, and in every
walk of intellect, a taste for strong excitement, which the stimulants
supplied from ordinary sources were insufficient to gratify;--that a
tame deference to established authorities had fallen into disrepute, no
less in literature than in politics, and that the poet who should
breathe into his songs the fierce and passionate spirit of the age, and
assert, untrammelled and unawed, the high dominion of genius, would be
the most sure of an audience toned in sympathy with his strains.

It is true that, to the licence on religious subjects, which revelled
through the first acts of that tremendous drama, a disposition of an
opposite tendency had, for some time, succeeded. Against the wit of the
scoffer, not only piety, but a better taste, revolted; and had Lord
Byron, in touching on such themes in Childe Harold, adopted a tone of
levity or derision, (such as, unluckily, he sometimes afterwards
descended to,) not all the originality and beauty of his work would have
secured for it a prompt or uncontested triumph. As it was, however, the
few dashes of scepticism with which he darkened his strain, far from
checking his popularity, were among those attractions which, as I have
said, independent of all the charms of the poetry, accelerated and
heightened its success. The religious feeling that has sprung up through
Europe since the French revolution--like the political principles that
have emerged out of the same event--in rejecting all the licentiousness
of that period, have preserved much of its spirit of freedom and
enquiry; and, among the best fruits of this enlarged and enlightened
piety is the liberty which it disposes men to accord to the opinions,
and even heresies, of others. To persons thus sincerely, and, at the
same time, tolerantly, devout, the spectacle of a great mind, like that
of Byron, labouring in the eclipse of scepticism, could not be otherwise
than an object of deep and solemn interest. If they had already known
wha