sh of mild sage. But banish,
dear Mrs. Cook, I beseech you the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your
whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out
with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic, you cannot poison
them or make them sharper than they are--but consider he is a
weakling--a flower."

Lamb gives his opinion that you can no more improve sucking pig than you
can refine a violet.

Thus he proceeds along his sparkling road--his humour and poetry
gleaming one through the other, and often leaving us in pleasant
uncertainty whether he is in jest or earnest. Though not gifted with the
strength and suppleness of a great humorist, he had an intermingled
sweetness and brightness beyond even the alchemy of Addison. We regret
to see his old-fashioned figure receding from our view--but he will ever
live in remembrance as the most joyous and affectionate of friends.

CHAPTER VIII.

Byron--Vision of Judgment--Lines to Hodgson--Beppo--Humorous
Rhyming--Profanity of the Age.

Moore considered that the original genius of Byron was for satire, and
he certainly first became known by his "English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers." Nevertheless, his humorous productions are very small
compared with his sentimental. It might perhaps have been expected that
his mind would assume a gloomy and cynical complexion. His personal
infirmity, with which, in his childhood, even his mother was wont to
taunt him, might well have begotten a severity similar to that of Pope.
The pressure of friends and creditors led him, while a mere stripling,
to form an uncongenial alliance with a stern puritan, who, while
enjoying his renown, sought to force his soaring genius into the
trammels of commonplace conventionalities. On his refusing, a clamour
was raised against him, and those who were too dull to criticise his
writings were fully equal to the task of finding fault with his morals.
It may be said that he might have smiled at these attacks, and conscious
of his power, have replied to his social as well as literary critics

"Better to err with Pope than shine with Pye,"

and so he might, had he possessed an imperturbable temper, and been able
to forecast his future fame. But a man's career is not secure until it
is ended, and the throne of the author is often his tomb. Moreover, the
same hot blood which laid him open to his enemies, also rendered him
impatient of rebuke. Coercion roused his spirit o