al in all
his latter poems, even in the "Isle," a poem little known, which was
written a short time before he left Genoa for Greece. Here, more than in
any other of his poems, we see the admirable peace of mind which he had
created for himself, and how far too high his great intellect soared to
be any longer moved by the world's injustice.

Quotations from his poems would be impossible. How choose without
regretting what has been discarded? They must be read; and those must be
pitied who do not feel morally better after having read them.

This is precisely what has been least done up to the present time:
people have been content with reading his early poems, and with seeking
Byron in "Childe Harold" or in the heroes of his Oriental poems; which
is about as just as to look for Shakspeare in Iago, Milton in Satan,
Goethe in Mephistopheles, or Lamartine in the blasphemies of his ninth
Meditation.

Thus French critics,--disposed to identify the man with the imaginary
beings of his poems, and neglecting to seek him where they could have
found him, relying upon judgments formed in England, and too often by
people prejudiced against Byron,--have themselves adopted false views
with respect to the author and his works. Thus, again, poetry--which
without any preconceived teaching or any particular doctrine of its own,
without transgressing the rules laid down by art, moved the soul,
purified and elevated it, and taught it to despise the base and cowardly
desires of nature, and excited in it the admiration of all that is noble
and heroic,--was declared to be suspicious even in France, because too
often it had proclaimed openly the truth where one would have wished
truth to have been disguised. Many would fain have thought otherwise,
but they preferred remaining silent, and to draw from that poetry the
poetical riches of which they might be in want.

Our intention being to consecrate a chapter to the examination of the
moral tendency of Byron's poetry, we will not now say more. We must add,
however, that these views which had been so easily adopted in France
were not those of the majority of right-thinking persons in England,
although they dared not proclaim their opinions then as they can now.

I shall only quote the opinion of two Englishmen of great merit (Moore
and Sir Egerton Brydges), who can neither one nor the other be suspected
of partiality; the first, on account of his great fear of ever wounding
the susceptibilitie