co and the Trecentisti; and
separated, much more singularly, from the cheerful joys of Chaucer,
Shakespeare, and Scott, by its unaccountable affection for "Rokkes blak"
and other forms of terror and power, such as those of the ice-oceans,
which to Shakespeare were only Alpine rheum; and the Via Malas and
Diabolic Bridges which Dante would have condemned none but lost souls to
climb, or cross;--all this love of impending mountains, coiled
thunder-clouds, and dangerous sea, being joined in us with a sulky,
almost ferine, love of retreat in valleys of Charmettes, gulfs of
Spezzia, ravines of Olympus, low lodgings in Chelsea, and close
brushwood at Coniston.

74. And, lastly, also in the whole group of us, glows volcanic instinct
of Astraean justice returning not to, but up out of, the earth, which
will not at all suffer us to rest any more in Pope's serene "whatever
is, is right"; but holds, on the contrary, profound conviction that
about ninety-nine hundredths of whatever at present is, is wrong:
conviction making four of us, according to our several manners, leaders
of revolution for the poor, and declarers of political doctrine
monstrous to the ears of mercenary mankind; and driving the fifth, less
sanguine, into mere painted-melody of lament over the fallacy of Hope
and the implacableness of Fate.

In Byron the indignation, the sorrow, and the effort are joined to the
death: and they are the parts of his nature (as of mine also in its
feebler terms), which the selfishly comfortable public have, literally,
no conception of whatever; and from which the piously sentimental
public, offering up daily the pure oblation of divine tranquillity,
shrink with anathema not unembittered by alarm.

75. Concerning which matters I hope to speak further and with more
precise illustration in my next paper; but, seeing that this present one
has been hitherto somewhat somber, and perhaps, to gentle readers, not a
little discomposing, I will conclude it with a piece of light biographic
study, necessary to my plan, and as conveniently admissible in this
place as afterwards;--namely, the account of the manner in which
Scott--whom we shall always find, as aforesaid, to be in salient and
palpable elements of character, of the World, worldly, as Burns is of
the Flesh, fleshly, and Byron of the Deuce, damnable,--spent his Sunday.

76. As usual, from Lockhart's farrago we cannot find out the first thing
we want to know,--whether Scott worked