hts and feelings required
powers worthy of the conception; and to make it susceptible of being
contemplated as within the scope and range of human sympathy, places
Byron above all his contemporaries and antecedents. Milton has
described in Satan the greatest of human passions, supernatural
attributes, directed to immortal intents, and stung with
inextinguishable revenge; but Satan is only a dilatation of man.
Manfred is loftier, and worse than Satan; he has conquered
punishment, having within himself a greater than hell can inflict.
There is a fearful mystery in this conception; it is only by solemnly
questioning the spirits that lurk within the dark metaphors in which
Manfred expresses himself, that the hideous secrets of the character
can be conjectured.

But although in intellectual power, and in creative originality,
Byron is entitled to stand on the highest peak of the mountain, his
verse is often so harsh, and his language so obscure, that in the
power of delighting he is only a poet of the second class. He had
all the talent and the means requisite to embody his conceptions in a
manner worthy of their might and majesty; his treasury was rich in
everything rare and beautiful for illustration, but he possessed not
the instinct requisite to guide him in the selection of the things
necessary to the inspiration of delight:--he could give his statue
life and beauty, and warmth, and motion, and eloquence, but not a
tuneful voice.

Some curious metaphysicians, in their subtle criticism, have said
that Don Juan was but the bright side of Childe Harold, and that all
its most brilliant imagery was similar to that of which the dark and
the shadows were delineated in his other works. It may be so. And,
without question, a great similarity runs through everything that has
come from the poet's pen; but it is a family resemblance, the progeny
are all like one another; but where are those who are like them? I
know of no author in prose or rhyme, in the English language, with
whom Byron can be compared. Imitators of his manner there will be
often and many, but he will ever remain one of the few whom the world
acknowledges are alike supreme, and yet unlike each other--epochal
characters, who mark extraordinary periods in history.

Raphael is the only man of pre-eminence whose career can be compared
with that of Byron; at an age when the genius of most men is but in
the dawning, they had both attained their meridian of glo