fame had some serious
drawbacks in the moral character of some of his writings. And it will be
found on inquiry that Byron, to get his instance against Cambridge, had to
go back eighteen years, passing over seven intermediate productions, of
which he had either never heard, or which he would not cite as waking a
genuine poet's fires.

The conclusion seems to be that the _Aboriginal Britons_ is a remarkable
youthful production, not equalled by subsequent efforts.

To enhance the position in which the satirist placed himself, two things
should be remembered. First, the glowing and justifiable terms in which
Byron had spoken,--a hundred and odd lines before he found it convenient to
say no Cambridge poet could compare with Richards,--of a Cambridge poet who
died only three years before Byron wrote, and produced greatly admired
works while actually studying in the University. The fame of Kirke
White[433] still lives; and future literary critics may perhaps compare his
writings and those of Richards, simply by reason of the curious relation in
which they are here placed alongside of each other. And it is much to
Byron's credit that, in speaking of the deceased Cambridge poet, he forgot
his own argument and its exigencies, and proved himself only a paradoxer
_pro re nata_.

Secondly, Byron was very unfortunate in another passage of the same poem:

{272}

"What varied wonders tempt us as they pass!
The cow-pox, tractors, galvanism, and gas.
In turns appear, to make the vulgar stare,
Till the swoln bubble bursts--and all is air!"

Three of the bubbles have burst to mighty ends. The metallic tractors are
disused; but the force which, if anything, they put in action, is at this
day, under the name of mesmerism, used, prohibited, respected, scorned,
assailed, defended, asserted, denied, declared utterly obscure, and
universally known. It was hard lines to select for candidates for oblivion
not one of whom got in. I shall myself, I am assured, be some day cited for
laughing at the great discovery of ----: the blank is left for my reader to
fill up in his own way; but I think I shall not be so unlucky in four
different ways.

FALSIFIED PREDICTION.

The narration before the fact, as prophecy has been called, sometimes quite
as true as the narration after the fact, is very ridiculous when it is
wrong. Why, the pre-narrator could not know; the post-narrator might have
known. A good collection of unlucky predictions