ght have been expected from one so splendidly endowed; for it has
ever appeared to me that he has accomplished in them everything he
proposed to attain, and that in this consists one of his great
merits. His mind, fervid and impassioned, was in all his
compositions, except Don Juan, eagerly fixed on the catastrophe. He
ever held the goal full in view, and drove to it in the most
immediate manner. By this straightforward simplicity all the
interest which intricacy excites was of necessity disregarded. He is
therefore not treated justly when it is supposed that he might have
done better had he shown more art: the wonder is, that he should
have produced such magnificent effects with so little. He could not
have made the satiated and meditative Harold so darkling and
excursive, so lone, "aweary," and misanthropical, had he treated him
as the hero of a scholastic epic. The might of the poet in such
creations lay in the riches of his diction and in the felicity with
which he described feelings in relation to the aspect of scenes amid
the reminiscences with which the scenes themselves were associated.

If in language and plan he be so excellent, it may be asked why
should he not be honoured with that pre-eminent niche in the temple
which so many in the world have by suffrage assigned to him? Simply
because, with all the life and beauty of his style, the vigour and
truth of his descriptions, the boldness of his conceptions, and the
reach of his vision in the dark abysses of passion, Lord Byron was
but imperfectly acquainted with human nature. He looked but on the
outside of man. No characteristic action distinguishes one of his
heroes from another, nor is there much dissimilarity in their
sentiments; they have no individuality; they stalk and pass in mist
and gloom, grim, ghastly, and portentous, mysterious shadows,
entities of the twilight, weird things like the sceptred effigies of
the unborn issue of Banquo.

Combined with vast power, Lord Byron possessed, beyond all question,
the greatest degree of originality of any poet of this age. In this
rare quality he has no parallel in any age. All other poets and
inventive authors are measured in their excellence by the accuracy
with which they fit sentiments appropriate not only to the characters
they create, but to the situations in which they place them: the
works of Lord Byron display the opposite to this, and with the most
extraordinary splendour. He endows his