en taken to excite them_." Scott is no more,
but there are more than one living who were present at this dialogue. He
was a man of very considerable talents and of great acquirements. He had
made his way, as a literary character, with high success, and in a few
years. Poor fellow! I recollect his joy, at some appointment, which he
had obtained, or was to obtain, through Sir James Mackintosh, and which
prevented the further extension (unless by a rapid run to Rome) of his
travels in Italy. I little thought to what it would conduct him. _Peace
be with him! and may all such other faults as are inevitable to humanity
be as readily forgiven him as the little injury which he had done to one
who respected his talents and regrets his loss._

BYRON.'"

Nor did his magnanimity stop here. After Scott's death, a subscription
for his widow was got up, and Lord Byron was requested to contribute ten
pounds.

"You may make my subscription for Mr. Scott's widow thirty pounds,
instead of the proposed ten," answered he; "but do not put down _my
name_. As I mentioned him in the pamphlet, it would look indelicate."

But this refined generosity was only one of the forms which Lord Byron's
kindliness took. To act thus, was a necessity for this privileged
nature, that could not endure to hate, and loved to pardon. Still, his
generosity had not yet entered on the road of great sacrifices. It had
not yet reached the highest degree of power over self. It did attain to
that, when it led him to comprise in one general pardon the so-called
friends who had abandoned him in his hour of sacrifice, and those bitter
enemies who knew no reconciliation, _when he forgave Lady Byron_. Then
his generosity merited the name of virtue.

Pusillanimity, which binds with an invisible chain the hearts and
tongues of vulgar souls, in unreal exacting society, had carried away
some; jealousy of his superiority had rendered others ferocious; and an
absolute moral monstrosity--an anomaly in the history of types of female
hideousness--had succeeded in showing itself in the light of
magnanimity. But false as was this high quality in Lady Byron, so did it
shine out in him true and admirable. The position in which Lady Byron
had placed him, and where she continued to keep him by her harshness,
silence, and strange refusals, was one of those which cause such
suffering, that the highest degree of self-control seldom suffices to
quiet the promptings of human weakness, and