im, but that consciousness of his
own errors, which was for ever livelily present in his mind,
would, under such circumstances, have been left, undisturbed
by any unjust provocation, to work its usual softening and,
perhaps, humbling influences on his spirit. But,--luckily, as
it proved, for the further triumphs of his genius,--no such
moderation was exercised. The storm of invective raised around
him, so utterly out of proportion with his offences, and the
base calumnies that were everywhere heaped upon his name, left
to his wounded pride no other resource than in the same
summoning up of strength, the same instinct of resistance to
injustice, which had first forced out the energies of his
youthful genius, and was now destined to give him a still
bolder and loftier range of its powers.

* * * * *

"But the greatest of his trials, as well as triumphs, was yet
to come. The last stage of this painful, though glorious,
course, in which fresh power was, at every step, wrung from
out of his soul, was that at which we are now arrived, his
marriage and its results,--without which, dear as was the
price paid by him in peace and character, his career would
have been incomplete, and the world still left in ignorance of
the full compass of his genius. It is indeed worthy of remark,
that it was not till his domestic circumstances began to
darken around him that his fancy, which had long been idle,
again arose upon the wing,--both the Siege of Corinth and
Parisina having been produced but a short time before the
separation. How conscious he was, too, that the turmoil which
followed was the true element of his restless spirit may be
collected from several passages of his letters, at that
period, in one of which he even mentions that his health had
become all the better for the conflict:--'It is odd,' he says,
'but agitation or contest of any kind gives a rebound to my
spirits, and sets me up for the time.'

"This buoyancy it was--this irrepressible spring of
mind,--that now enabled him to bear up not only against the
assaults of others, but what was still more difficult, against
his own thoughts and feelings. The muster of all his mental
resources to which, in self-defence, he had been driven, but
opened to him the yet undreamed extent and capacity