the guilt and misery of
Manfred.

That Manfred is the greatest of Byron's works will probably not be
disputed. It has more than the fatal mysticism of Macbeth, with the
satanic grandeur of the Paradise Lost, and the hero is placed in
circumstances, and amid scenes, which accord with the stupendous
features of his preternatural character. How then, it may be asked,
does this moral phantom, that has never been, bear any resemblance to
the poet himself? Must not, in this instance, the hypothesis which
assigns to Byron's heroes his own sentiments and feelings be
abandoned? I think not. In noticing the deep and solemn reflections
with which he was affected in ascending the Rhine, and which he has
embodied in the third canto of Childe Harold, I have already pointed
out a similarity in the tenour of the thoughts to those of Manfred,
as well as the striking acknowledgment of the "filed" mind. There
is, moreover, in the drama, the same distaste of the world which
Byron himself expressed when cogitating on the desolation of his
hearth, and the same contempt of the insufficiency of his genius and
renown to mitigate contrition--all in strange harmony with the same
magnificent objects of sight. Is not the opening soliloquy of
Manfred the very echo of the reflections on the Rhine?

My slumbers--if I slumber--are not sleep,
But a continuance of enduring thought,
Which then I can resist not; in my heart
There is a vigil, and these eyes but close
To look within--and yet I live and bear
The aspect and the form of breathing man.

But the following is more impressive: it is the very phrase he would
himself have employed to have spoken of the consequences of his fatal
marriage:

My in juries came down on those who lov'd me,
On those whom I best lov'd; I never quell'd
An enemy, save in my just defence--
But my embrace was fatal.

He had not, indeed, been engaged in any duel of which the issue was
mortal; but he had been so far engaged with more than one, that he
could easily conceive what it would have been to have quelled an
enemy in just defence. But unless the reader can himself discern, by
his sympathies, that there is the resemblance I contend for, it is of
no use to multiply instances. I shall, therefore, give but one other
extract, which breathes the predominant spirit of all Byron 's works-
-that sad translation of the preacher's "vanity of vanities; all is
vanity!"

Look on me! there is an order
O