ti--M. de Lamartine did not forget a few personal attacks upon
himself, and called Byron the founder of the school for promoting
satanic laughter, while he heaped upon him the most monstrous
accusations. M. de Lamartine ventured to say of Byron things which even
his greatest enemies never dared to utter at that time when in England
it was the custom to revile him. Although the time has not yet come when
Lord Byron's life should be written, since the true sources of
collecting information respecting him are unattainable so long as the
people live to whom his letters were addressed, still it is easy to
perceive that the time has at length arrived when in England the desire
to do him justice and fairly to examine his merits is felt by the nation
generally. Moore, Parry, Medwin, etc., have already attempted to make
known the character of the man as distinct from that of the poet. They
no longer sought to find in him a resemblance with Childe Harold, or the
Corsair, or Manfred, or Don Juan, nor to judge of him by the
conversations in which he sought to mystify those with whom he
conversed; but they judged him by his acts and by his correspondence.

If so happy a reaction, however, is visible in England the same can not
be said of France, where there being no time to read what is published
elsewhere, an error is too soon embraced and ingrafted on the mind of
the public as a consequence of a certain method which dispenses with all
research. Hence the imaginary creation which has been called Byron, and
which has been maintained in France notwithstanding its being wholly
unacceptable as a portrait of the man, and totally different from the
Byron known personally to some happy few who had the pleasure of
beholding in him the handsomest, the most amiable of men, and the
greatest genius whom God has created.

But M. de Lamartine, who wishes particularly to show the character of
the man, instead of adding to the numerous proofs of courage and
grandeur of mind which he has personally shown to the world--that of
confessing that he has erred in his judgment of Byron--endeavors to
study him only in his works. But in doing this, and even though a moral
object may be found in each of Byron's works, it strikes us that M. de
Lamartine would have done better to pursue this line in the analysis of
the intellectual part of the man, and not the moral side.

"You err" (wrote Byron to Moore on the occasion of the latter saying
that such a poem