orce of
passion expressed in it, but altogether by the apt and searching
sarcasm of the political allusions. Viewed with reference to the
time and place in which it was composed, it would probably deserve to
be ranked as a high and bold effort: simply as a drama, it may not
be entitled to rank above tragedies of the second or third class.
But I mean not to set my opinion of this work against that of the
public, the English public; all I contend for is, that it possesses
many passages of uncommon beauty, and that its chief tragic merit
consists in its political indignation; but above all, that is another
and a strong proof too, of what I have been endeavouring to show,
that the power of the poet consisted in giving vent to his own
feelings, and not, like his great brethren, or even his less, in the
invention of situations or of appropriate sentiments. It is,
perhaps, as it stands, not fit to succeed in representation; but it
is so rich in matter that it would not be a difficult task to make
out of little more than the third part a tragedy which would not
dishonour the English stage.

I have never been able to understand why it has been so often
supposed that Lord Byron was actuated in the composition of his
different works by any other motive than enjoyment: perhaps no poet
had ever less of an ulterior purpose in his mind during the fits of
inspiration (for the epithet may be applied correctly to him and to
the moods in which he was accustomed to write) than this singular and
impassioned man. Those who imagine that he had any intention to
impair the reverence due to religion, or to weaken the hinges of
moral action, give him credit for far more design and prospective
purpose than he possessed. They could have known nothing of the man,
the main defect of whose character, in relation to everything, was in
having too little of the element or principle of purpose. He was a
thing of impulses, and to judge of what he either said or did, as the
results of predetermination, was not only to do the harshest
injustice, but to show a total ignorance of his character. His whole
fault, the darkest course of those flights and deviations from
propriety which have drawn upon him the severest animadversion, lay
in the unbridled state of his impulses. He felt, but never reasoned.
I am led to make these observations by noticing the ungracious, or,
more justly, the illiberal spirit in which The Prophecy of Dante,
which was publish