respect history more or
less; when this is not the case, his imagination supplies the
deficiency. On this principle he gives us his details of Lord Byron's
parents and of the poet's childhood.

He makes use of Lord Byron as an artist makes use of a machine: he
places him in the position which he has chosen himself, gives him the
gesture he pleases, and the expression he wishes. The portrait he shows
us of him may be a little like Lord Byron; but a very distant likeness,
one surrounded by a world of caprice of fancy and eccentricity which
serve to make up a powerful picture. It is the effect of a well-posed
manikin, with its very flexible articulations, all placed at the
disposal of M. Taine's system. The features may be slightly those of
Lord Byron, but the gestures and the general physiognomy are the clever
creations of the artist.

This is how he proceeds, in order to obtain the triumph of his views:--

He selects some quarter of an hour from the life of a man, probably that
during which he obeyed the impulses of nature, and judges his whole
existence and character by this short space of time.

He takes from the author's career one page, perhaps that which he may
have written in a moment of hallucination or of extreme passion; and by
this single page he judges the author of ten volumes.

Take Lord Byron, for instance. With regard to his infancy, M. Taine
takes care to set aside all that he knows to be admirable in the boy,
and only notices one instance of energy, one fit of heroic passion, into
which the unjust reprimand of a maid had driven him. The touching tears
which the little Byron sheds when, in the midst of his playmates, he is
informed that he has been raised to the dignity of a peer of the realm,
are no sign to M. Taine of a character equally timid, sensitive, and
good, but the result of pride. In this trait alone, M. Taine sees almost
sufficient ground to lay thereon the foundations of his work, and to
show us in the boy what the man was to be. A similar process is used in
the examination of Byron as an author. He analyzes "Manfred," which is
most decidedly a work of prodigious power, and all he says of it is
certainly both true and worthy of his own great talent; but is it fair
to say that the poet and the man are entirely revealed in this work, and
to dismiss all the other creations of the poet, wherein milder
qualities, such as feeling, tenderness, and goodness are revealed, and
shine forth most pro