Many causes have conspired to make the task difficult, and the
portrait unlike. Physically speaking, on account of his matchless
beauty--mentally, owing to his genius--and morally, owing to the rare
qualities of his soul, Lord Byron was certainly a phenomenon. The world
agrees in this opinion; but is not yet agreed upon the nature and moral
value of the phenomenon. But as all phenomena have, besides a primary
and extraordinary cause, some secondary and accidental causes, which it
is necessary to examine in order that they may be understood; so, to
explain Byron's nature, we must not neglect to observe the causes which
have contributed chiefly to the formation of his individuality.

His biographers have rather considered the results than the causes.

Even Moore, the best among them, if not, indeed, the only one who can
claim the title of biographer, grants that the nature of Lord Byron and
its operations were inexplicable, but does not give himself the trouble
to understand them.

Here are his own words:--"So various indeed, and contradictory were his
attributes, both moral and intellectual, that he may be pronounced to
have been not one, but many: nor would it be any great exaggeration of
the truth to say, that out of the mere partition of the properties of
his single mind, a plurality of characters, all different and all
vigorous, might have been furnished. It was this multiform aspect
exhibited by him that led the world, during his short, wondrous career,
to compare him with the medley host of personages, almost all differing
from each other, which he playfully enumerates in one of his journals.

"The object of so many contradictory comparisons must probably be like
something different from them all; but what _that_ is, is more than I
know, or any body else."

But, while merely explaining the extraordinary richness of this nature
by the analysis of its results, by his changeable character, by the
frankness which ever made his heart speak that which it felt, by his
excessive sensitiveness, which made him the slave of momentary
impressions, by his almost childlike delight and astonishment at things,
Moore does not arrive at the true causes of the phenomenon. He
registers, it is true, certain effects which become causes when they
draw upon the head of Lord Byron certain false judgments, and open the
door to every calumny.

Without adopting the system of the influence of races on mankind--which,
if pushed to its ex