sina.' Some of the 'Hebrew Melodies' are
unequaled in lyric fire. The romances are all taking narratives, full of
Oriental passion, vivid descriptions of scenery, and portraitures of
female loveliness and dark-browed heroes, often full of melody, but
melodramatic; and in substance do not bear analysis. But they still
impress with their flow of vitality, their directness and power of
versification, and their frequent beauty.

Sated with varied dissipation, worn out with the flighty adoration of
Lady Caroline Lamb, and urged by his friends to marry and settle down,
Byron married (January 2d, 1815) Anne Isabella, daughter of Sir Ralph
Milbanke. He liked but did not love her; and she was no doubt fascinated
by the reputation of the most famous man in Europe, and perhaps indulged
the philanthropic hope that she could reform the literary Corsair. On
the 10th of December was born Augusta Ada, the daughter whom Byron
celebrates in his verse and to whom he was always tenderly attached. On
the 15th of January, five weeks after her daughter's birth, Lady Byron
left home with the child to pay a visit to her family, dispatching to
her husband a playfully tender letter. Shortly after, he was informed by
her father and by herself that she did not intend ever to return to him.
It is useless to enter into the controversy as to the cause of this
separation. In the light of the latest revelations, the better opinion
seems to be that it was a hopeless incongruity that might have been
predicted from the characters of the two. It seems that Lady Byron was
not quite so amiable as she was supposed to be, and in her later years
she was subject to hallucinations. Byron, it must be admitted, was an
impossible husband for any woman, most of all for any woman who cared
for the social conventions. This affair brought down upon Byron a storm
of public indignation which drove him from England. The society which
had petted him and excused his vagaries and violations of all decency,
now turned upon him with rage and made the idol responsible for the
foolishness of his worshipers. To the end of his life, neither society
nor the critics ever forgave him, and did not even do justice to his
genius. His espousal of the popular cause in Europe embittered the
conservative element, and the freedom of speculation in such masterly
works as 'Cain' brought upon him the anathemas of orthodox England.
Henceforth in England his poetry was judged by his liberal and
uno