any in return. In
publishing the book we are, moreover, certain that what to-day may
appear praise, to-morrow will be termed justice.

Lord Byron shone at a period when a school called Romantic was in
progress of formation. That school wanted a type by which to mould its
heroes, as a planet requires a sun to give it light. It took Byron as
that type, and adorned him with all the qualities which pleased its
fancy, but the time has more than arrived when it is necessary that
truth should reveal him in his true light. My book is not likely to
dispel every cloud, but a few shades only add to the lustre and
brilliancy of a landscape.

LORD BYRON.

"Others form the man: I tell of him."--MONTAIGNE.

At all times the world has been very unjust; and (who does not know it?)
in the history of nations many an Aristides has paid with exile the
price of his virtues and his popularity. Great men, great countries,
whole nations, whole centuries, have had to bear up against injustice;
and the truth is, that vice has so often taken the place of virtue, evil
of good, and error of truth, some have been judged so severely and
others so leniently, that, could the book of redress be written, not
only would it be too voluminous, but it would also be too painful to
peruse. Honest people would feel shame to see the judgments before which
many a great mind has had to bend; and how often party spirit, either
religious or political, moved by the basest passions--such as hatred,
envy, rivalry, vengeance, fanaticism, intolerance, self-love--has been a
pretext for disfiguring in the eyes of the public the greatest and
noblest characters. It would then be seen how some censor (profiting by
the breach which circumstances, or even a slight fault on the part of
these great minds, may have made, and joining issue with other inferior
judges of character) has often succeeded in throwing a shade on their
glorious actions and in casting a slur upon their reputation, like those
little insects which from their number actually succeed, notwithstanding
their smallness, in darkening the rays of the sun. What is worse,
however, is, that when history has once been erroneously written, and a
hero has been put forward in colors which are not real, the public
actually becomes accessory to the deception practiced upon it: for it
becomes so enamored of the false type which has been held out to its
admiration that it will not loosen its hold on it. Public opi