and another great spirit, Montaigne. One might fancy one hears Lord
Byron saying, with the other:--

"The continual intercourse I hold with ancient thought, and the ideas
caught from those wondrous spirits of by-gone times, disgust me with
others and with myself."

He also felt _ennui_ at living in an age that _only produced very
ordinary things_.

But whether he felt happy or sad, it was always in silence, in
retirement, and contemplation of the great visible nature, carrying his
thought away to what does not the less exist though veiled from our
feeble sight and intellect; it was there, I say, that his mind and heart
sought strength, peace, and consolation.

His soul was bursting with mighty griefs when he arrived in
Switzerland, on the borders of Lake Leman. He loved this beautiful spot,
but did not deem himself sufficiently alone to enjoy it fully.

"There is too much of man here, to look through
With a fit mind the might which I behold,"

said he; and he promised himself soon to arrive at that beloved
solitude, so necessary to him for enjoying well the grand spectacle
presented by Helvetian nature; but, he added:--

"To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind:
* * * * * * *
Nor is it discontent to keep the mind
Deep in its fountain, lest it over boil
In the hot throng."

And then he continues:--

"I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me; and to me
High mountains are a feeling."

Thus, even in the midst of the beloved solitude so necessary to him,
there was no misanthropy in his thoughts or feelings, but simply the
desire of not being disturbed in his studies and reveries. Lord Byron
often said, that solitude made him better. He thought, on that head,
like La Bruyere:--"_All the evil in us_," says that great moralist,
"_springs from the impossibility of our being alone. Thence we fall into
gambling, luxury, dissipation, wine, women, ignorance, slandering, envy,
forgetfulness of self, and of God._" If the satisfaction of this noble
want were to be called _misanthropy_, few of our great spirits, whether
philosophers, poets, or orators, could escape the accusation. For, with
almost all of them, the taste for retirement and solitude has been
likewise a necessity: a condition without which we should have lost
their greatest _chefs-d'oeuvre_. The biography of the noblest minds
leaves no doubt on this head. But if Lord Byron did not use solitu