Travellers find in _Childe Harold_ lightning glimpses of European scenery,
art, and nature, needing no illustrations, almost defying them. National
conditions, manners, customs, and costumes, are photographed in his
verses:--the rapid rush to Waterloo; a bull-fight in Spain; the women of
Cadiz or Saragossa; the Lion of St. Mark; the eloquent statue of the Dying
Gladiator; "Fair Greece, sad relic of departed worth;" the address to the
ocean; touches of love and hate; pictures of sorrow, of torture, of death.
Everywhere thought and glance are powerfully concentrated, and we find the
poem to be journal, history, epic, and autobiography. His felicity of
expression is so great, that, as we come upon the happy conceptions
exquisitely rendered, we are inclined to say of each, as he has said of
the Egeria of Muna:

... whatsoe'er thy birth,
Thou wert a beautiful thought and softly bodied forth.

Of his dramas which are founded upon history, we cannot say so much; they
are dramatic only in form: some of them are spectacular, like
_Sardanapalus_, which is still presented upon the stage on account of its
scenic effects. In _Manfred_ we have a rare insight into his nature, and
_Cain_ is the vehicle for his peculiar, dark sentiments on the subject of
religion.

_Don Juan_ is illustrative not only of the poet, but of the age; there was
a generation of such men and women. But quite apart from its moral, or
rather immoral, character, the poem is one of the finest in our
literature: it is full of wonderful descriptions, and exhibits a splendid
mastery of language, rhythm, and rhyme: a glorious epic with an inglorious
hero, and that hero Byron himself.

As a man he was an enigma to the world, and doubtless to himself: he was
bad, but he was bold. If he was vindictive, he was generous; if he was
misanthropic and sceptical, it was partly because he despised shams: in
all his actions, we see that implicit working out of his own nature, which
not only conceals nothing, but even exaggerates his own faults. His
antecedents were bad;--his father was a villain; his grand-uncle a
murderer; his mother a woman of violent temper; and himself, with all this
legacy, a man of powerful passions. If evil is in any degree to be
palliated because it is hereditary, those who most condemn it in the
abstract, may still look with compassionate leniency upon the career of
Lord Byron.

THOMAS MOORE.--Emphatically the creature