Lord Byron has been more or less felt by all who ever approached him.
That he sometimes descended from the clouds, and was familiar and
earthly, is true; but his dwelling was amid the murk and the mist, and
the home of his spirit in the abyss of the storm and the hiding-places
of guilt. He was at the time of which I am speaking scarcely
two-and-twenty, and could claim no higher praise than having written a
clever satire; and yet it was impossible, even then, to reflect on the
bias of his mind, as it was revealed by the casualties of conversation,
without experiencing a presentiment, that he was destined to execute
extraordinary things. The description he has given of "Manfred" in his
youth, was of himself:--

'My spirit walk'd not with the souls of men,
Nor look'd upon the earth with human eyes;
The thirst of their ambition was not mine,
The aim of their existence was not mine;
My joys, my griefs, my passions, and my powers,
Made me a stranger.'"

All that is very well, but the only astonishing part is Mr. Galt's
astonishment. The incomprehensible phantom of melancholy and caprice
then hanging over Lord Byron, was especially his genius seeking an
outlet; it was the melancholy that lays hold of so many great minds,
because, having a vision of beauty and fame before their eyes, they fear
not attaining to it. That it was which one day led Petrarch, all
tearful, to his consoler John of Florence. If almost all great geniuses,
ere carving out their path, have experienced this fever of the soul,
falling into certain kinds of melancholy, that put on all sorts of
forms,--sometimes noisy, sometimes capricious, sometimes misanthropical,
was there not greater reason for Lord Byron to undergo such a crisis--at
a period when energy of heart and mind was not yet balanced by
confidence in his own genius? For he had not met with a John of
Florence; he had been so much hurt at the cruel reception given to his
first attempts, that it appeared to him he ought to seek another
direction for the employment of his energetic faculties, and turn to
active life, as many of his tastes invited. But his genius, unknown to
the world as to himself, was, however, fermenting within his brain,
feeding on dreams; now pacing a deck, now beneath a starry sky, anon by
moonlight, and causing him to absorb from every thing all homogeneous to
his nature; and thus "Childe Harold" came to light. When Lord Byron took
his pen, the mechanical part o