s's
depreciation of Pope has hardly permitted me do justice to his own
genius, which, _malgre_ all the fantastic fopperies of his style, was
undoubtedly of great promise. His fragment of 'Hyperion' seems actually
inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as AEschylus. He is a loss to
our literature; and the more so, as he himself, before his death, is
said to have been persuaded that he had not taken the right line, and
was reforming his style upon the more classical models of the language."

Were we wrong in saying that the accusations against Byron, with respect
to Keats, did not deserve a notice? If we have noticed them, it has been
merely to show, that the French critic should have judged matters in
this instance with greater conscientiousness and reflection.

Influenced as Byron always was by his own ideas of beauty, he required
in the authors themselves certain moral qualities which would demand for
their works the bestowal of his praise. It was not only their talent,
but their loyalty, their independence of character, their political
consistency, and their perfect honesty, which endeared Walter Scott,
Moore, and others, to him.

Byron, on the other hand, had never found these qualities in the
Lakists, and especially in the head of their school, whose whole life,
on the contrary, bore the marks of quite opposite characteristics. Since
Southey's dream of a life of intimacy with other poets of his school,
such as Wordsworth and Coleridge, in some blissful remote spot from
which they would publish their works in common, and where they would
live with their wives and children in community of interests, some
change had taken place; for Southey had so far deviated from his purpose
as to become Laureate, to write for himself, and to profess ultra-Tory
principles, the ultimate objects of which could not but be palpable.

All this called for Byron's contempt. To this contempt, however, he gave
no expression, for fear of wounding without reason, until that reason
did arise by the Laureate's unforgiving spirit. "The Laureate," says
Byron, "is not one of those who can forgive." Incapable of forgetting
that Byron's genius had obscured his own reputation, Southey hated Byron
with an intensity, such as to make him look out for opportunities of
doing him an injury. This opportunity Southey found in Byron's departure
for the Continent, subsequently to the unfortunate result of his
marriage; and not only did he join in all the c