er over the sacred hills of
Judaea; to idealize a beautiful peasant girl among the ruins of Greece,
than converse with the monks of Palestine in their gloomy retreats.

The result of Byron's travels was seen in the first two cantos of
"Childe Harold," showing alike the fertility of his mind and the
aspirations of a lofty genius. These were published in 1812, soon after
his return to England, at the age of twenty-four. They took England by
storm, creating both surprise and admiration. Public curiosity and
enthusiasm for the young poet, who had mounted to the front ranks of
literature at a single leap, was unbounded and universal. As he himself
wrote: "I awoke one morning and found myself famous."

Young Byron was now sought, courted, and adored, especially by ladies of
the highest rank. Everybody was desirous to catch even a glimpse of the
greatest poet that had appeared since Pope and Dryden; any palace or
drawing-room he desired to enter was open to him. He was surfeited with
roses and praises and incense. He alone took precedence over Scott and
Coleridge and Moore and Campbell. For a time his pre-eminence in
literature was generally conceded. He was the foremost man of letters of
his day, and the greatest popular idol. His rank added to his _eclat_,
since not many noblemen were distinguished for genius or literary
excellence. His singular beauty of face and person, despite his slight
lameness, attracted the admiring gaze of women. What Abelard was in the
schools of philosophy, Byron was in the drawing-rooms of London. People
forgot his antecedents, so far as they were known, in the intoxication
of universal admiration and unbounded worship of genius. No poet in
English history was ever seated on a prouder throne, and no heathen
deity was ever more indifferent than he to the incense of idolaters.

Far be it from me to attempt an analysis of the merits of the poem with
which the fame of Byron will be forever identified. Its great merits
are universally conceded; and while it has defects,--great inequalities
in both style and matter; some stanzas supernal in beauty, and others
only mediocre,--on the whole, the poem is extraordinary. Byron adopted
the Spenserian measure,--perhaps the most difficult of all measures,
hard even to read aloud,--in which blank verse seems to blend with
rhyme. It might be either to the ear, though to the eye it is elaborate
rhyme,--such as would severely task a made poet, but which this born