d
verse, but very few men have been distinguished as prose writers and
poets at the same time. Sir Walter Scott and Southey are the most
remarkable exceptions. I think that Macaulay could have been
distinguished as a poet, if he had so pleased; but he would have been a
literary poet like Wordsworth or Tennyson or Coleridge,--not a man who
sings out of his soul because he cannot help it, like Byron or Burns, or
like Whittier among our American poets.

It was not until 1819, when Byron had been three years in Venice, that
he fell in love with the Countess Guiccioli, the wife of one of the
richest nobles of Italy,--young, beautiful, and interesting. This love
seems to have been disinterested and lasting; and while it was a
violation of all the rules of morality, and would not have been allowed
in any other country than Italy, it did not further degrade him. It was
pretty much such a love as Voltaire had for Madame de Chatelet; and with
it he was at last content. There is no evidence that Byron ever afterward
loved any other woman; and what is very singular about the affair
is that it was condoned by the husband, until it became a scandal
even in Italy.

The countess was taken ill on her way to Ravenna, and thither Byron
followed her, and lived in the same palace with her,--the palace of her
husband, who courted the poet's society, and who afterward left his
young countess to free intercourse with Byron at Bologna,--not without a
compensation in revenue, which was more disgraceful than the amour
itself. About this time Byron would probably have returned to England
but for the enchantment which enslaved him. He could not part from the
countess, nor she from him.

The Pope pronounced the separation of the count from his wife, and she
returned to her father's house on a pittance of L200 a year. She
sacrificed everything for the young English poet,--her splendid home,
her relatives, her honor, and her pride. Never was there a sadder
episode in the life of a man of letters. If Byron had married such a
woman in his early life, how different might have been his history! With
such a love as she inspired, had he been faithful to it, he might have
lived in radiant happiness, the idol and the pride of all admirers of
genius wherever the English language is spoken, seated on a throne
which kings might envy. So much have circumstances to do with human
destinies! Since Abelard, never was there a man more capable of a
genuine fervid l