tenth transmitter of a foolish face:" a mere man of genius is no
better than a worm. His Muse is also a lady of quality. The people are not
polite enough for him: the Court is not sufficiently intellectual. He
hates the one and despises the other. By hating and despising others, he
does not learn to be satisfied with himself. A fastidious man soon grows
querulous and splenetic. If there is nobody but ourselves to come up to
our idea of fancied perfection, we easily get tired of our idol. When a
man is tired of what he is, by a natural perversity he sets up for what he
is not. If he is a poet, he pretends to be a metaphysician: if he is a
patrician in rank and feeling, he would fain be one of the people. His
ruling motive is not the love of the people, but of distinction;--not of
truth, but of singularity. He patronises men of letters out of vanity, and
deserts them from caprice, or from the advice of friends. He embarks in an
obnoxious publication to provoke censure, and leaves it to shift for
itself for fear of scandal. We do not like Sir Walter's gratuitous
servility: we like Lord Byron's preposterous _liberalism_ little better.
He may affect the principles of equality, but he resumes his privilege of
peerage, upon occasion. His Lordship has made great offers of service to
the Greeks--money and horses. He is at present in Cephalonia, waiting the
event!

* * * * *

We had written thus far when news came of the death of Lord Byron, and put
an end at once to a strain of somewhat peevish invective, which was
intended to meet his eye, not to insult his memory. Had we known that we
were writing his epitaph, we must have done it with a different feeling.
As it is, we think it better and more like himself, to let what we had
written stand, than to take up our leaden shafts, and try to melt them
into "tears of sensibility," or mould them into dull praise, and an
affected show of candour. We were not silent during the author's
life-time, either for his reproof or encouragement (such as we could give,
and _he_ did not disdain to accept) nor can we now turn undertakers' men
to fix the glittering plate upon his coffin, or fall into the procession
of popular woe.--Death cancels every thing but truth; and strips a man of
every thing but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canonization.
It makes the meanest of us sacred--it installs the poet in his
immortality, and lifts him to the skies. Death i