of experiencing them. Let people
only make the distinction between the two personages whom malice has
taken pleasure in confounding, an error willingly adopted by a certain
set and imposed on credulous minds.[170]

The relation between the two is not one of family or race, but a purely
accidental external resemblance; the result of some strange fancy and
intellectual want in the poet, whose powerful imagination, while having
recourse only to his own spontaneity for the creation of ideal beings
and types, yet required to rest always on reality, for painting the
material world and for embodying his metaphysical conceptions.

Thus these two personages leave the same shore, on the same vessel, to
make the same voyage, and meet with the same adventures. Both have the
same family relations,--a mother, a sister; yes, but their souls are not
in the same state, because not of the same nature. That results clearly
from a simple inspection of the poem, for all who read in good faith;
since, out of 191 stanzas that make up the first two cantos of "Childe
Harold," there are 112 wherein the poet forgets his hero, speaks in his
own name, and shows his real soul--a soul full of energy and beauty,
becoming enthusiastic at sight of the wonders displayed in creation, of
grandeur, virtue, and love.

Moralists of good faith can tell whether a mind that was corrupted,
satiated, wearied, could possibly have felt such enthusiasm. In reality,
these emotions betokened the future poet, then unknown to the world and
to himself. Let us return to the man,--the best justification for the
poet. From Lisbon he wrote another letter, full of fun, to his friend
Hodgson. Already he found all well; better than in England. Already he
declared himself greatly amused with his pilgrimage: the sight of the
Tagus pleased him, Cintra delighted him; he talked Latin at the convent,
fed on oranges, embraced every body, asked news of every body and every
thing; "and we find him," says Moore, "in this charming, gay, sportive,
schoolboy humor, just at the very moment that 'Childe Harold' is about
to reveal to the world his misanthropy, disgust, and insensibility. Lord
Byron went from Lisbon to Seville, going seventy miles a day on
horseback in the heat of a Spanish July, always delighted, complaining
of nothing (in a country where all was wanting), and he arrived in
perfect health. There, in that beautiful city of serenades and
love-making courtships, his handsome fa