party spirit in politics, defending privileges to the death; nor the
anti-Christian ferocity displayed by that portion of the clergy who,
without reason or sincerity, attacked him from the pulpit; nor yet the
malice and revenge displayed in the vile slanders that pursued him to
his last hour; we can, on the other hand, comprehend, and even, up to a
certain point, excuse this prosperous and noble country of England for
not classing her great son among popular poets--for hiding her
admiration cautiously: since it must be acknowledged that Lord Byron
often acted and wrote rather _as belonging to humanity, than merely as
belonging to England_.

But if he were treated with the same injustice by foreigners, could the
same excuse be made for them? Would a man be excusable if laziness and
carelessness made him accept, without examination, some type set up for
Lord Byron by a country wounded in her self-love, as England had been,
or the reserves made by hostile biographers, under the weighty influence
of a society organized as English society then was? The vile system
which consists in seeking to give a good opinion of one's own morality
by being severe on the morality of others, is only too well known. Would
it be excusable to apply it ruthlessly to Lord Byron?--to pretend to
repeat that in attacking prejudice he wounded morals?--that he injured
virtue by warring against hypocrisy?--that by using a right inherent to
the human mind in some hypothetical lines of a poem, written at
twenty-one years of age, and which is beyond the comprehension of the
multitude, since the greater number of mankind neither read elevated
poetry nor works of high taste; is it not absurd to pretend that he
wished to upset them in their religious belief, and deprive them of
truths which are at once their consolation, support, and refuge in time
of sorrow and suffering?

Nevertheless, _Frenchmen_ have spoken thus; and in this way, through
these united causes, Lord Byron has remained _unappreciated_ as a man
and unfairly judged as a poet.

One calls him _the poet of evil_; another _the bard of sorrow_. But no!
Lord Byron was not exclusively either one or the other. He was _the poet
of the soul_, just as Shakspeare was before him.

Lord Byron, in writing, never had in view virtue rather than vice. To
take his stand as a teacher of humanity, at his age, would have seemed
ridiculous to him. After having chosen subjects in harmony with his
genius, and a p