minently? "Manfred" is the cry of an ulcerated
heart, still struggling, with all the energy of a most powerful soul,
against the brutal decrees of a recent persecution. Lord Byron felt
himself to be the victim of the relentless conduct of Lady Byron, and if
his mind was not deranged, at least his soul was wounded and ill at
ease, and it was this spirit that dictated "Manfred." Did he not clearly
confess it himself? When he sent "Manfred" to Murray, did he not say
that it was a drama as mad as the tragedy of "Lee Bedlam," in
twenty-five acts, and a few comic scenes--his own being only in three
acts?

Did he not write to Moore as follows?--

"I wrote a sort of mad drama for the sake of introducing the Alpine
scenery. Almost all the _dramatis personae_ are spirits, ghosts, or
magicians; and the scene is in the Alps and the other world, so you may
suppose what a Bedlam tragedy it must be.... The third act, like the
Archbishop of Grenada's homily (which savored of the palsy), has the
dregs of my fever, during which it was written. It must on no account be
published in its present state.... The speech of Manfred to the sun is
the only part of this act I thought good myself; the rest is certainly
as bad as bad can be, and I wonder what the devil possessed me."

But let Byron's ideas take a different turn, as the lovely blue Italian
sky and the refreshing breezes from the Adriatic waters contribute to
quicken his blood, and other tones will be heard, wherein no longer
shall the excesses, but the beauties only of energy be discernible.

What does M. Taine say then? This new aspect does not, evidently,
satisfy him! but what of that? He goes on to say that Byron's genius is
falling off. If the poet takes advantage of a few moments of melancholy
common to all poetical and feeling souls, M. Taine declares that the
melancholy English nature is always associated with the epicurean. What
is it to him, that England thinks differently? that in her opinion Lord
Byron's grandest and noblest conceptions are the poems which he wrote in
Italy, and even on the eve of his death? and that she finds his
liveliness "too real and too ultramontane to suit her national tastes?"
Nothing of this troubles M. Taine.

Is it quite fair to judge so powerful a mind, so great and yet so simple
a being as Lord Byron, only by his "Manfred," or by some other passages
of his works, and especially of "Don Juan?" Can his amiable, docile,
tender, and feeling na