"He is now at rest!
And praise and blame fall on his ears alike,
Now dull in death. Yes, Byron, thou art gone!
Gone like a star that through the firmament
Shot and was lost, in its eccentric course,
Dazzling, perplexing."
Is the time yet come for a just and reliable life of Byron to be written? May the veil be lifted from the brow of truth without making revealments that would annoy, if not injure, still living actors in his short but eventful drama? Not yet. The principal heroine of that drama still exists, and, amidst contumely, harsh interpretations, and doubts, contending with a nation's partiality for one of its greatest geniuses, she has borne her faculties so meekly, and her wrongs so unobtrusively, that the respect of silence is due to the repose of the sunset of a life whose meridian was so disturbed by storms.
The first thing that strikes a writer who would produce a life of Byron, however short, is his universally-acknowledged genius-a genius so exalted, so various, and, in every view, so extraordinary, that we say with his friend, the poet whose lines I have adopted as my motto, it is dazzling, perplexing! Genius is that aptitude for a particular object of the human mind which, like the rays concentrated in the focus of the burning glass, produces intense effect where it is directed. Mankind vary in this faculty as wonderfully as they do in their features, and wisely has Providence so ordered it, for thus this divine emanation becomes universally beneficial. But as, whilst acknowledging gratefully the common and least showy blessings that surround us on the earth, our love and admiration are principally given to its sublime sunsets, its mildly beautiful moonlights, its glittering stars, its more near and dear sweet flowers, so have the efforts of genius, which have been