of about four pages each--upon
Hobhouse and Lord Carlisle may be justified by their close connection
with Byron's affairs; though some of us might have been content with
less. Allusions to such notorious evildoers as Tarquin are explained,
and stock quotations from Shakespeare have been carefully verified.
The result is that a reader might go through this edition of Byron
with the very slightest previous knowledge of general literature or of
contemporary history, and might give himself a very fair middle-class
education in the process, although the consequence might be to imbue
him with what Coleridge has called 'a passion for the disconnected.'
Nevertheless we readily acknowledge the thorough execution of this
part of the editorial work, and the very meritorious labour that has
been spent upon bringing together every kind of document and reference
that can inform or enlighten us upon the main subjects of Byron's life
and writings. In the poems the practice of giving in notes the rough
drafts and rejected versions of passages and lines, so as to show the
poet at work, seems to us not altogether fair to him, and is
occasionally distracting to those readers who enjoy a fine picture
without asking how the colours were mixed, or are not anxious about
the secrets of a good dinner. Yet to students of method, to the
fellow-craftsman, and to the literary virtuoso, these variant
readings, of which there are sometimes four to a single line, may
often be of substantial interest, as throwing light on the tendencies
and predilections of taste which are the formative influences upon
style in prose or poetry.

Probably the most favourable circumstance for a poet is that he should
only be known, like the Divinity of Nature, from his works; or at
least that, like Wordsworth, he should keep the noiseless tenor of his
way down some secluded vale of life, whereby his poems stand out in
clear relief like fine paintings on a plain wall. Is there any modern
English poet of the first class, except Byron, whose entire prose
writings and biography are bound up in standard editions with his
poetry? The question is at any rate worth asking, because certainly
there is no case in which the record of a poet's private life and
personal fortunes has so greatly affected, for good or for ill, his
poetic reputation. Those who detested his character and condemned his
way of living found it difficult to praise his verses; they detected
the serpent under ev