creations with his own
qualities; he finds in the situations in which he places them only
opportunities to express what he has himself felt or suffered; and
yet he mixes so much probability in the circumstances, that they are
always eloquently proper. He does everything, as it were, the
reverse of other poets; in the air and sea, which have been in all
times the emblems of change and the similitudes of inconstancy, he
has discovered the very principles of permanency. The ocean in his
view, not by its vastness, its unfathomable depths, and its limitless
extent, becomes an image of deity, by its unchangeable character!

The variety of his productions present a prodigious display of power.
In his short career he has entitled himself to be ranked in the first
class of the British poets for quantity alone. By Childe Harold, and
his other poems of the same mood, he has extended the scope of
feeling, made us acquainted with new trains of association, awakened
sympathies which few suspected themselves of possessing; and he has
laid open darker recesses in the bosom than were previously supposed
to exist. The deep and dreadful caverns of remorse had long been
explored but he was the first to visit the bottomless pit of satiety.

The delineation of that Promethean fortitude which defied conscience,
as he has shown it in Manfred, is his greatest achievement. The
terrific fables of Marlowe and of Goethe, in their respective
versions of the legend of Faustus, had disclosed the utmost writhings
which remorse in the fiercest of its torments can express; but what
are those Laocoon agonies to the sublime serenity of Manfred. In the
power, the originality, and the genius combined, of that unexampled
performance, Lord Byron has placed himself on an equality with
Milton. The Satan of the Paradise Lost is animated by motives, and
dignified by an eternal enterprise. He hath purposes of infinite
prospect to perform, and an immeasurable ambition to satisfy.
Manfred hath neither purpose nor ambition, nor any desire that seeks
gratification. He hath done a deed which severs him from hope, as
everlastingly as the apostacy with the angels has done Satan. He
acknowledges no contrition to bespeak commiseration, he complains of
no wrong to justify revenge, for he feels none; he despises sympathy,
and almost glories in his perdition.

The creation of such a character is in the sublimest degree of
originality; to give it appropriate thoug