poetic race, it is true, from the greater susceptibility of their
imaginations, have more frequently fallen into the ever ready snare. But
the fate of the poets in matrimony has but justified the caution of the
philosophers. While the latter have given warning to genius by keeping
free of the yoke, the others have still more effectually done so by
their misery under it;--the annals of this sensitive race having, at all
times, abounded with proofs, that genius ranks but low among the
elements of social happiness,--that, in general, the brighter the gift,
the more disturbing its influence, and that in married life
particularly, its effects have been too often like that of the "Wormwood
Star," whose light filled the waters on which it fell with bitterness.

Besides the causes already enumerated as leading naturally to such a
result, from the peculiarities by which, in most instances, these great
labourers in the field of thought are characterised, there is also much,
no doubt, to be attributed to an unluckiness in the choice of
helpmates,--dictated, as that choice frequently must be, by an
imagination accustomed to deceive itself. But from whatever causes it
may have arisen, the coincidence is no less striking than saddening,
that, on the list of married poets who have been unhappy in their homes,
there should already be found four such illustrious names as Dante,
Milton[58], Shakspeare[59], and Dryden; and that we should now have to
add, as a partner in their destiny, a name worthy of being placed beside
the greatest of them,--Lord Byron.

I have already mentioned my having been called up to town in the
December of this year. The opportunities I had of seeing Lord Byron
during my stay were frequent; and, among them, not the least memorable
or agreeable were those evenings we passed together at the house of his
banker, Mr. Douglas Kinnaird, where music,--followed by its accustomed
sequel of supper, brandy and water, and not a little laughter,--kept us
together, usually, till rather a late hour. Besides those songs of mine
which he has himself somewhere recorded as his favourites, there was
also one to a Portuguese air, "The song of war shall echo through our
mountains," which seemed especially to please him;--the national
character of the music, and the recurrence of the words "sunny
mountains," bringing back freshly to his memory the impressions of all
he had seen in Portugal. I have, indeed, known few persons more alive