day which brought to us the hope of our immortality, he would
awake in the bosom of God.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 17: Sympathy.]

[Footnote 18: The Rev. Mr. Hodgson and the Rev. Mr. Harness.]

[Footnote 19: Article on his Life in Italy and at Pisa.]

CHAPTER V.

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF LORD BYRON.

All Byron's biographers (at least all those who knew him) have borne
testimony to his great goodness, but they have not dwelt sufficiently
upon this principal feature in his character. Biographers generally wish
to produce an effect. But goodness is not a sufficiently noticeable
quality to be dilated upon; it would not repay ambition or curiosity. It
is a quality mostly attributed to the saints, and a biographer prefers
dilating upon the defects of his hero, upon some adventure or
scandal--means by which it is easy, with a spark of cleverness, to make
a monster of a saint: for, alas! the most rooted convictions are often
sacrificed for the sake of amusing a reader who is difficult to please,
and of satisfying an editor.

Lord Byron's goodness, however, was so exceptional, and contrasted so
strongly with the qualities attributed to him by those who only knew him
by repute, that, in making an exception of him, astonishment, at the
very least, might have been the result. If we look at him
conscientiously in every act of his life, in his letters, and in his
poetry, we must sympathize particularly with him. We find that his
goodness shines as prominently as does his genius, and we feel that it
can bear any test at any epoch of, alas! his too short existence. As,
however, I do not purpose here to write his biography, I shall confine
myself merely to a few instances, and will give only a few proofs taken
from his early life. To no one can the words of Alfieri be better
applied than to Byron:--"He is the continuation of the child"--an idea
which has been expressed even more elegantly of late by Disraeli, in his
"Literary Characters:"--

"As the sun is seen best at its rising and its setting, so men's native
dispositions are clearly perceived while they are children, and when
they are dying."

LORD BYRON'S CHILDHOOD.

Of those who have written Byron's life, the best disposed among them
have not sufficiently noticed his admirable perfection of character when
a child, as revealed to us by sundry anecdotes and by his own poems,
entitled "Hours of Idleness:"--

"There was in his disposition," says Moore, "as appears