ow, and
bigotted prejudices: Lord Byron is the greatest pamperer of those
prejudices, by seeming to think there is nothing else worth encouraging
but the seeds or the full luxuriant growth of dogmatism and self-conceit.
In reading the _Scotch Novels_, we never think about the author, except
from a feeling of curiosity respecting our unknown benefactor: in reading
Lord Byron's works, he himself is never absent from our minds. The
colouring of Lord Byron's style, however rich and dipped in Tyrian dyes,
is nevertheless opaque, is in itself an object of delight and wonder: Sir
Walter Scott's is perfectly transparent. In studying the one, you seem to
gaze at the figures cut in stained glass, which exclude the view beyond,
and where the pure light of Heaven is only a means of setting off the
gorgeousness of art: in reading the other, you look through a noble window
at the clear and varied landscape without. Or to sum up the distinction
in one word, Sir Walter Scott is the most _dramatic_ writer now living;
and Lord Byron is the least so.--It would be difficult to imagine that the
Author of Waverley is in the smallest degree a pedant; as it would be hard
to persuade ourselves that the Author of Childe Harold and Don Juan is not
a coxcomb, though a provoking and sublime one. In this decided preference
given to Sir Walter Scott over Lord Byron, we distinctly include the
prose-works of the former; for we do not think his poetry alone by any
means entitles him to that precedence. Sir Walter in his poetry, though
pleasing and natural, is a comparative trifler: it is in his anonymous
productions that he has shown himself for what he is!--

_Intensity_ is the great and prominent distinction of Lord Byron's
writings. He seldom gets beyond force of style, nor has he produced any
regular work or masterly whole. He does not prepare any plan beforehand,
nor revise and retouch what he has written with polished accuracy. His
only object seems to be to stimulate himself and his readers for the
moment--to keep both alive, to drive away ennui, to substitute a feverish
and irritable state of excitement for listless indolence or even calm
enjoyment. For this purpose he pitches on any subject at random without
much thought or delicacy--he is only impatient to begin--and takes care to
adorn and enrich it as he proceeds with "thoughts that breathe and words
that burn." He composes (as he himself has said) whether he is in the
bath, in his study, or