t it was to doubt, themselves, they would enter into his fate with
mournful sympathy; while, if safe in the tranquil haven of faith, they
would look with pity on one who was still a wanderer. Besides, erring
and dark as might be his views at that moment, there were circumstances
in his character and fate that gave a hope of better thoughts yet
dawning upon him. From his temperament and youth, there could be little
fear that he was yet hardened in his heresies, and as, for a heart
wounded like his, there was, they knew, but one true source of
consolation, so it was hoped that the love of truth, so apparent in all
he wrote, would, one day, enable him to find it.

Another, and not the least of those causes which concurred with the
intrinsic claims of his genius to give an impulse to the tide of success
that now flowed upon him, was, unquestionably, the peculiarity of his
personal history and character. There had been, in his very first
introduction of himself to the public, a sufficient portion of
singularity to excite strong attention and interest. While all other
youths of talent, in his high station, are heralded into life by the
applauses and anticipations of a host of friends, young Byron stood
forth alone, unannounced by either praise or promise,--the
representative of an ancient house, whose name, long lost in the gloomy
solitudes of Newstead, seemed to have just awakened from the sleep of
half a century in his person. The circumstances that, in succession,
followed,--the prompt vigour of his reprisals upon the assailants of his
fame,--his disappearance, after this achievement, from the scene of his
triumph, without deigning even to wait for the laurels which he had
earned, and his departure on a far pilgrimage, whose limits he left to
chance and fancy,--all these successive incidents had thrown an air of
adventure round the character of the young poet, which prepared his
readers to meet half-way the impressions of his genius. Instead of
finding him, on a nearer view, fall short of their imaginations, the new
features of his disposition now disclosed to them far outwent, in
peculiarity and interest, whatever they might have preconceived; while
the curiosity and sympathy, awakened by what he suffered to transpire of
his history, were still more heightened by the mystery of his allusions
to much that yet remained untold. The late losses by death which he had
sustained, and which, it was manifest, he most deeply mourned