,
melancholy always originated from some moral external cause, which
would tend to show, that without such cause, his melancholy would not
have existed, or else might have been quite overcome. But, before
arriving at a definition, we must analyze it, after taking a rapid
glance at his whole life.

It has even been said, that our conduct in early years offers a sure
indication of our future; that the man does but continue the child. Let
us then begin by studying Byron during his childhood. We know from the
testimony of his nurses and preceptors, both in Scotland and England,
that goodness, sensibility, tenderness, and likewise gayety, with a
tendency to jesting, formed the basis of his character. Nevertheless, a
yearning after solitude led him into solitary distant walks, along the
sea-shore when he was living at Aberdeen, or amid the wild poetic
mountains of Scotland, near the romantic banks of the Dee, often putting
his life in danger, and causing much alarm to his mother. But this
sprang simply from his ardent nature, which, far from inclining him to
melancholy, made earth seem like a paradise.

Has he not described these ecstasies of his childhood in "Tasso's
Lament:"--

"From my very birth my soul was drunk with love," etc.

This want of solitude became still more remarkable as reflection
acquired further development. At Harrow, he would leave his favorite
games and dear companions to go and sit alone on the stone which bears
his name. But this want of living alone sometimes in the fairyland of
his imagination, feeding on his own sentiments, and the bright illusions
of his youthful soul, was that what is yclept melancholy? No, no; what
he experienced was but the harbinger of genius, destined to dazzle the
world; Disraeli, that great observer of the race of geniuses, so
affirms:--

"Eagles fly alone," exclaims Sydney, "while sheep are ever to be found
in flocks."

Almost all men of genius have experienced this precocious desire of
solitude. But Lord Byron, who united so many contrasts, and, according
to Moore, the faculties of several men, had also much of the child about
him. And, while almost all children belonging to the race of great
intellects, have neither taste nor aptitude for bodily exercises and
games of dexterity, he, by exception to the general rule, on coming out
of his reveries, experienced equally the want of giving himself up
passionately to the play and stir of companions who were inferio