al genius. They themselves, and not descriptions of
them, kindled it up; and thus "thoughts that breathe, and words that
burn," do almost entirely compose the fourth canto, which is worth, ten
times over, all the rest. The impetuosity of his career is astonishing;
never for a moment does his wing flag; ever and anon he stoops but to
soar again with a more majestic sweep; and you see how he glories in his
flight--that he is proud as Lucifer. The first two cantos are frequently
cold, cumbrous, stiff, heavy, and dull; and, with the exception of
perhaps a dozen stanzas, and these far from being of first-rate
excellence, they are found woefully wanting in the true fire. Many
passages are but the baldest prose. Byron, after all, was right in
thinking--at first--but poorly of these cantos; and so was the friend,
not Mr Hobhouse, who threw cold water upon them in manuscript. True,
they "made a prodigious sensation," but bitter-bad stuff has often done
that; while often unheeded or unheard has been an angel's voice. Had
they been suffered to stand alone, long ere now had they been pretty
well forgotten; and had they been followed by other two cantos no better
than themselves, then had the whole four in good time been most
certainly damned. But, fortunately, the poet, in his pride, felt himself
pledged to proceed; and proceed he did in a superior style; borrowing,
stealing, and robbing, with a face of aristocratic assurance that must
have amazed the plundered; but intermingling with the spoil riches
fairly won by his own genius from the exhaustless treasury of nature,
who loved her wayward her wicked, and her wondrous son. Is "Childe
Harold," then, a Great Poem? What! with one-half of it little above
mediocrity, one quarter of it not original in conception, and in
execution swarming with faults, and the remainder glorious? As for his
tales--the "Giaour," "Corsair," "Lara," "Bride of Abydos," "Siege of
Corinth," and so forth--they are all spirited, energetic, and passionate
performances--sometimes nobly and sometimes meanly versified--but
displaying neither originality nor fertility of invention, and assuredly
no wide range either of feeling or of thought, though over that range a
supreme dominion. Some of his dramas are magnificent--and in many of his
smaller poems pathos and beauty overflow. Don Juan exhibits almost every
kind of talent; and in it the degradation of poetry is perfect.

But there is another glory belonging to this