ry.

As for the second canto, it opens with a monologue of the minstrel, and
Harold is forgotten until the sixteenth stanza. Then only does the
melancholy hero appear, to disappear and reappear again for a few
moments. But he rather seems to annoy the minstrel, who finishes at the
seventy-third stanza by dismissing him altogether; and from that moment
to the end of the canto the wretched and unamiable personage does not
reappear. To whom, then, belong all the admirable sentiments and all the
virtuous aspirations which we read of toward the end of the canto?--to
whom, if not to the minstrel himself? that is, to Lord Byron. What poet
has paid so noble a tribute to every virtue? Could that vigor and
freshness of mind which breathe upon the lips of the poet, and which
well belonged to him, suit the corrupted nature of Harold? If Byron
dismisses his hero so often, it is because he experiences toward him the
feelings of a logical moralist.

Why then identify Lord Byron with a personage he himself disowns as his
prototype, both in his notes, in his preface, in his conversations; and
who is proved by facts, by the poem itself, and by the poet's logical
and moral reasoning, to be entirely different from his creation? It is
true that Byron conceived the unfortunate idea of surrounding his hero
by several incidents in his own existence, to place him in the social
circle to which he himself belonged, and to give him a mother and a
sister, a disappointed love, a Newstead Abbey like his own, and to make
him travel where he had travelled and experience the same adventures.

That is true, and such an act of imprudence can only be explained, by
the confidence on which he relied that the identification could never
have been thought of. At twenty-one conscience speaks louder than
experience. But if we can justify the accusation of his having been
imprudent, can we justify his having been calumniated?

Eight years after the publication of the second canto, Byron wrote the
third; and here the pilgrim occasionally appears, but so changed that he
seems to have been merged into the poet, and to form with him one person
only. Childe Harold's sorrows are those of Lord Byron, but there no
longer exists any trace of misanthropy or of satiety. His heart already
beats with that of the poet for chaste and devoted affections, for all
the most amiable, the most noble, and the most sublime of sentiments. He
loves the flowers, the smiling and glorious