is "Life in Italy."]

[Footnote 116: Ibid.]

CHAPTER XVIII.

LORD BYRON'S MOBILITY.

So much has been said of Lord Byron's mobility that it is necessary to
analyze it well, and examine it under different aspects, so as to define
and bring it within due limits. In the first place, we may ask on what
grounds his biographers rested their opinion of this extraordinary
mobility, which, according to them, went beyond the scope of
intellectual qualities rather into the category of faults of temper?
Evidently it was again through accepting a testimony the small value of
which we have already shown; namely, Lord Byron's own words at
twenty-three years of age--that period when passion is hardly ever a
regular wind, simply swelling sails, but rather a gusty tempest,
tearing them to pieces; and then again they grounded their opinion
on verses in "Don Juan," where he explains the meaning of these
expressions,--versatility and mobility. Moore, from motives we shall
examine hereafter, found it expedient to take Lord Byron at his word,
and to make a great fuss about this quality. In summing up his
character, he reasons very cleverly on the unexampled extent, as he
calls it, of this faculty, and the consequences to which it led in Lord
Byron. Following in Moore's wake, other biographers have proclaimed Lord
Byron versatile. Moore exaggerates so far as to pretend that this
faculty made it almost impossible to find a dominant characteristic in
Lord Byron. As if mobility were not, in reality, a universal quality or
defect,--as if men could so govern themselves throughout life as to
resemble the hero of a drama, where the action is confined within
classical rules.

"A man possessing the highest order of mind is, nevertheless, unequal,"
says La Bruyere. "He suffers from increase and diminution; he gets into
a good train of thought, and falls out of it likewise.

"It is different with an automaton. Such a man is like a machine,--a
spring. Weight carries him away, making him move and turn forever in the
same direction, and with equal motion. He is uniform, and never changes.
Once seen, he appears the same at all times and periods of life. At
best, he is but the ox lowing, or the blackbird whistling; he is fixed
and stamped by nature, and I may say by species. What shows least in him
is his soul; that never acts,--is never brought into play,--perpetually
reposes. Such a man will be a gainer by death."

La Bruyere also says, "Th