t, if
there be any copyism, it must be in the two poems, where the same
versification is adopted. However, they exempt The Corsair from all
resemblance to any thing, though I rather wonder at his escape.

"If ever I did any thing original, it was in Childe Harold, which
_I_ prefer to the other things always, after the first week.
Yesterday I re-read English Bards;--bating the _malice_, it is the
_best_.

"Ever," &c.

[Footnote 27: A Poem by Mr. Stratford Canning, full of spirit and power,
entitled "Buonaparte." In a subsequent note to Mr. Murray, Lord Byron
says,--"I do not think less highly of 'Buonaparte' for knowing the
author. I was aware that he was a man of talent, but did not suspect him
of possessing _all_ the _family_ talents in such perfection."]

* * * * *

A resolution was, about this time, adopted by him, which, however
strange and precipitate it appeared, a knowledge of the previous state
of his mind may enable us to account for satisfactorily. He had now, for
two years, been drawing upon the admiration of the public with a
rapidity and success which seemed to defy exhaustion,--having crowded,
indeed, into that brief interval the materials of a long life of fame.
But admiration is a sort of impost from which most minds are but too
willing to relieve themselves. The eye grows weary of looking up to the
same object of wonder, and begins to exchange, at last, the delight of
observing its elevation for the less generous pleasure of watching and
speculating on its fall. The reputation of Lord Byron had already begun
to experience some of these consequences of its own prolonged and
constantly renewed splendour. Even among that host of admirers who would
have been the last to find fault, there were some not unwilling to
repose from praise; while they, who had been from the first reluctant
eulogists, took advantage of these apparent symptoms of satiety to
indulge in blame.[28]

The loud outcry raised, at the beginning of the present year, by his
verses to the Princess Charlotte, had afforded a vent for much of this
reserved venom; and the tone of disparagement in which some of his
assailants now affected to speak of his poetry was, however absurd and
contemptible in itself, precisely that sort of attack which was the most
calculated to wound his, at once, proud and diffident spirit. As long as
they confined themselves to blackening his m