with the world, are yet pervious to appeals to the spirit that survives
beneath the dry dust amid which they move; but only at rare intervals can
they accompany the pure lyrist "singing as if he would never be old," and
they are apt to turn with some impatience even from _Romeo and Juliet_ to
_Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_. To them, on the other hand, the hard wit of
_Hudibras_ is equally tiresome, and more distasteful; their chosen friend
is the humourist who, inspired by a subtle perception of the
contradictions of life, sees matter for smiles in sorrow, and tears in
laughter. Byron was not, in the highest sense, a great humourist; he does
not blend together the two phases, as they are blended in single sentences
or whole chapters of Sterne, in the April-sunshine of Richter, or in
_Sartor Resartus_; but he comes near to produce the same effect by his
unequalled power of alternating them. His wit is seldom hard, never dry,
for it is moistened by the constant juxtaposition of sentiment. His
tenderness is none the less genuine that he is perpetually jerking it
away--an equally favourite fashion with Carlyle,--as if he could not trust
himself to be serious for fear of becoming sentimental; and, in
recollection of his frequent exhibitions of unaffected hysteria, we accept
his own confession--

If I laugh at any mortal thing,
'Tis that I may not weep,

as a perfectly sincere comment on the most sincere, and therefore in many
respects the most effective, of his works. He has, after his way,
endeavoured in grave prose and light verse to defend it against its
assailants; saying, "In _Don Juan_ I take a vicious and unprincipled
character, and lead him through those ranks of society whose
accomplishments cover and cloak their vices, and paint the natural
effects;" and elsewhere, that he means to make his scamp "end as a member
of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, or by the guillotine, or in an
unhappy marriage." It were easy to dilate on the fact that in interpreting
the phrases of the satirist into the language of the moralist we often
require to read them backwards: Byron's own statement, "I hate a motive,"
is, however, more to the point:

But the fact is that I have nothing plann'd,
Unless it were to be a moment merry--
A novel word in my vocabulary.

_Don Juan_ can only be credited with a text in the sense in which every
large experience, of its own accord, conveys its lesson. It was t