nd it was the especial object of the Edinburgh Review to handle authors
roughly,--to condemn and not to praise. Criticism was not then a
science, as it became fifty years later, in the hands of Sainte-Beuve,
who endeavored to review every production fairly and justly. There was
nothing like justice entering into the head of Jeffrey or Sydney Smith
or Brougham, or later on of Macaulay, whose articles were often written
for political party effect. Critics, from the time of Swift down to the
middle of the century, aimed to demolish enemies, and to make party
capital; hence, as a general thing, their articles were not criticisms
at all, but attacks. And as even an Achilles was vulnerable in his heel,
so most intellectual giants have some weak point for the shafts of
malice to penetrate. Yet it is the weaknesses of great men that people
like to quote.

If Byron was humiliated, enraged, and embittered by the severity of the
Edinburgh Review, he was not crushed. He rallied, collected his
unsuspected strength, and shattered his opponents by one of the
wittiest, most brilliant, and most unscrupulous satires in our
literature, which he called "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." At the
height of his fame he regretted and suppressed this youthful production
of malice and bitterness. Yet it was the beginning of his great career,
both as to a consciousness of his own powers and in attracting the
public attention. It was doubtless unwise, since he attacked many who
were afterwards his friends, and since he sowed the seeds of hatred
among those who might otherwise have been his admirers or apologists. He
had to learn the truth that "with what measure ye mete it shall be
measured to you again." The creators of public opinion in reference to
Byron have not been women of fashion, or men of the world, but literary
lions themselves,--like Thackeray, who detested him, and the whole
school of pharisaic ecclesiastical dignitaries, who abhorred in him
sentiments which they condoned in Fielding, in Burns, in Rousseau, and
in Voltaire.

Before his bitter satire was published, however, Byron took his seat in
the House of Lords, not knowing any peer sufficiently to be introduced
by him. His guardian, Lord Carlisle, treated him very shabbily, refusing
to furnish to the Lord Chancellor some important information, of a
technical kind, which refusal delayed the ceremony for several weeks,
until the necessary papers could be procured from Cornwall re