e wished to occupy, and that he would fain have achieved other
success.

But the destiny that was evidently contrary to his tastes, and which
through a thousand circumstances carried him away both from a military
and a parliamentary career, to keep him almost perforce in the high
walks of literature, was this destiny in accordance at least with his
nature? Lord Byron's brilliant debut in the senate, and his whole
conduct in Greece when that country was one great military camp, prove
certainly that he might have reaped full harvest in other fields, if
fate had so allowed. But nevertheless when we see how prodigious were
his achievements, concentrated within the domain of poetry; when we see
that, despite himself, despite the resolution he occasionally took of
writing no more, that yet, tortured by the energy of his genius, there
was no remedy for him but to seize his pen; that he wrote sometimes
under the influence of fever; that sleep did not still his imagination,
nor travelling interrupt his works; that sorrow did not damp his ardor,
nor amusement and pleasure weaken his wondrous energy. When we think
that he united to this formidable vigor of genius such a luxuriant
poetic vein; that his poems, unrivalled for depth of thought,
conciseness, and magic beauty of style, were composed with all the ease
of ordinary prose; that he could write them while conversing, interrupt
his thread of ideas, and take it up again without difficulty, carry on
his theme without previous preparation, not stay his pen except to turn
the leaf, not change a single word in whole pages, generally only
correcting when the proof-sheets came. When we know that a poem like the
"Bride of Abydos" was written in four nights of a London season, the
"Corsair" in ten days, "Lara" in three weeks, his fourth Canto of
"Childe Harold" in twenty days, the "Lament of Tasso" in the space of
time requisite for going from Ferrara to Florence; the "Prisoner of
Chillon" by way of pastime during the day bad weather forced him to
spend at a hotel on the borders of the Lake of Geneva; when we know that
he wrote the "Siege of Corinth" and "Parisina" amid the torments caused
by his separation, and when besieged with creditors; that at Ravenna, in
the space of one year, while torn by many sorrows, and annoyed by
conspiracies, though he generously aided the conspirators, he yet found
leisure to write "Marino Faliero," the "Foscari," "Sardanapalus,"
"Cain," the "Vision of J