ives the grave.

That Byron wrote best when he wrote of himself and of his own, has
probably been already made sufficiently apparent. In this respect he
stands alone and apart from all other poets, and there will be
occasion to show, that this peculiarity extended much farther over
all his works, than merely to those which may be said to have
required him to be thus personal. The great distinction, indeed, of
his merit consists in that singularity. Shakspeare, in drawing the
materials of his dramas from tales and history has, with wonderful
art, given from his own invention and imagination the fittest and
most appropriate sentiments and language; and admiration at the
perfection with which he has accomplished this, can never be
exhausted. The difference between Byron and Shakspeare consists in
the curious accident, if it may be so called, by which the former was
placed in circumstances which taught him to feel in himself the very
sentiments that he has ascribed to his characters. Shakspeare
created the feelings of his, and with such excellence, that they are
not only probable to the situations, but give to the personifications
the individuality of living persons. Byron's are scarcely less so;
but with him there was no invention, only experience, and when he
attempts to express more than he has himself known, he is always
comparatively feeble.

CHAPTER XXXI

Byron determines to reside abroad--Visits the Plain of Waterloo--
State of his Feelings

From different incidental expressions in his correspondence it is
sufficiently evident that Byron, before his marriage, intended to
reside abroad. In his letter to me of the 11th December, 1813, he
distinctly states this intention, and intimates that he then thought
of establishing his home in Greece. It is not therefore surprising
that, after his separation from Lady Byron, he should have determined
to carry this intention into effect; for at that period, besides the
calumny heaped upon him from all quarters, the embarrassment of his
affairs, and the retaliatory satire, all tended to force him into
exile; he had no longer any particular tie to bind him to England.

On the 25th of April, 1816, he sailed for Ostend, and resumed the
composition of Childe Harold, it may be said, from the moment of his
embarkation. In it, however, there is no longer the fiction of an
imaginary character stalking like a shadow amid his descriptions and
reflections----he comes