try through sentiment
or passion, but on duty and principle. He loved her, but justice also!
and he loved justice best. And in order to do homage to truth, he had
committed the fault of saying a host of irreverential truths concerning
that country, and also many individuals belonging to it; consequently he
had made many enemies for himself. Indeed, his enemies might be found in
every camp: among the orthodox, in the literary world, and the world of
fashion, among the fair sex, and in the political world. Moore, for his
part, wished to live in peace with all these potentates,--the warm,
comfortable, and brilliant atmosphere of their society had become a
necessity for him; and wishing also, perhaps, to obtain pardon for his
friend's boldness, he probably thought to conciliate all things by
sparing the susceptibility of the great. Instead, then, of attributing
Lord Byron's severe appreciations to observation, experience, and
serious reflection, he preferred declaring them the result of capricious
and inconsistent mobility. But more just in the depths of his soul than
he was in words, Moore, it is easy to see, felt painfully conscious of
the wrong done to his illustrious friend, and ardently wished to make
his own weakness tally with truth. What was the result? The brilliant
edifice he had raised was so unstable of basis, that it could not stand
the logic of facts and conclusions. While appearing to consider the
excess of this quality as a defect, and calling it dangerous, he was all
the time showing that Lord Byron had strength to overcome any real
danger it contained; he was giving it to be understood that this
versatility of intellect might exist without the least mobility of
principle; he made out that mobility was the ornament of his
intelligence, just as he had shown constancy to be the ornament of his
soul. Then, after having reasoned cleverly on this quality, yclept
versatility when applied to the intelligence, and mobility when applied
to conduct; after having shown how predominant it must have been in Lord
Byron through his great impressionability; Moore says that Lord Byron
did yield to his versatile humor, without scruple or resistance, in all
things attracting his mind, in all the excursions of reason or fancy
assuming all the forms in which his genius could manifest its power,
transporting himself into all the regions of thought where there were
any new conquests to make; and that thereby he gave to the world a