e sickness of that "masculine breast
with feeble arms;" "of that philosopher who only wanted strength to
become a saint;" "of that bird without wings," said a woman of genius,
"that exhales its calm melancholy plaint on the shores whence vessels
depart, and where only shivered remnants return;" the melancholy of an
Obermann, whose goodness and almost ascetic virtues are palsied for want
of equilibrium, and whose discouragement and ennui were only calculated
to exercise a baneful influence over the individual, and over humanity?
No; the _striking_ characteristics that exist in all these sorts of
melancholy are utterly wanting to Lord Byron's. His was not a melancholy
that had become chronic, like Rene's, ere arriving at life's maturity.
For, whereas, the child Rene was gloomy and wearied, the child Byron was
passionate and sensitive, but gay, amusing, and frolicsome. His fits of
melancholy were only developed under the action of thought, reflection,
and circumstances. Nor was it Werther's kind of melancholy; for, even at
intensest height of passion, reason never abandoned its sway over Lord
Byron's energetic soul; with himself, if not with his heroes, personal
sacrifice always took, or wished to take, the place of satisfied
passion.

It was not that of Hamlet, for a single instant's dissimulation would
have been impossible for Lord Byron. It was not that of Obermann, for
his energetic nature could not partake the weakness and powerlessness of
Oberon; his strength equalled his genius.

It was not, either, that of Childe Harold, for this hero of his first
poem is, in the first and second canto, the personification of youthful
exquisites, with senses dulled and satiated by excesses to which Lord
Byron had never yielded when he composed this type, since he was then
only twenty-one years of age, and had hardly quitted the university,
where he lived surrounded by intellectual friends, who have all
testified to his mode of life there, and then at Newstead Abbey, where
he may have become a little dissipated, but still without any excess
capable of engendering satiety. Nor was his melancholy that of the
darker heroes he has described in "Lara" and "Manfred," for he never
knew remorse; and we have already seen to what must be attributed all
these identifications between himself and his heroes.[161]

In general, these kinds of melancholy have other causes, or else they
arise from individual organization. With him, on the contrary