f ambitious men spend their
lives in trying to obtain. And then, too, we must not lose sight of
Byron's genius, though it is abundantly clear that all there was of
noble and beautiful in Byron's nature was entirely given to his art,
and that outside of his art there remained nothing but a temperament
burdened with all the ugliest faults of the artistic nature,
artificially forced and developed by untoward circumstance. There
remains the perennial mystery of genius, which can put into glowing
words and exquisite phrases emotions which it can conceive but cannot
feel. Leigh Hunt's deliberate view of Byron is that he did everything
for effect, that his vanity was boundless and insatiable, and that even
his raptures were stage raptures. There is little reason to doubt it.
Byron's tumultuous agonies of soul were little more than the rage of
the spoilt child, who cannot bear that things should go contrary to its
desires. Byron, by concealing the causes of his melancholy, and
attaching to it a nobler motive, made himself into a Hamlet when he was
in reality only a Timon. What view are we to take of Byron's
intervention in the affairs of Greece? To fling oneself into a
revolutionary movement, to sacrifice money and health, to suffer, to
die, is surely an evidence of enthusiasm and sincerity? Leigh Hunt
would have us believe that this, too, was nothing but a pose. He tells
us how the gift of ten thousand pounds to the Greek Revolutionaries,
which was publicly announced by Byron's action, was reduced to a loan
of four thousand. He tells the story of the three gilded helmets,
bearing the family motto, "Crede Byron," which the poet offered to show
him, that he had had made for himself and Trelawny and Count Pietro
Gamba. The conclusion is irresistible that there was a large infusion
of vanity in the whole scheme, and that Byron had his eye upon the
world, here as elsewhere. The Greek expedition would exhibit him in a
chivalrous and romantic light; it might provide him with some
excitement, though Leigh Hunt maintains that Byron was physically and
morally a coward; and indeed, judging from what one knows of Byron, it
is hard to believe that his enthusiasm was an unselfish one, or that he
was deeply stirred with patriotic emotions, though he was perhaps
swayed by a certain artistic sympathy.

It may be asked, is it not better to put the most generous construction
upon Byron's acts, to believe that his was a nature of high enthusiasms