those with whom
he associated, it would be fairer, perhaps, to conclude that this
erroneous valuation arose rather from a diffidence in his own judgment
than from any deficiency of it. To his college companions, almost all of
whom were his superiors in scholarship, and some of them even, at this
time, his competitors in poetry, he looked up with a degree of fond and
admiring deference, for which his ignorance of his own intellectual
strength alone could account; and the example, as well as tastes, of
these young writers being mostly on the side of established models,
their authority, as long as it influenced him, would, to a certain
degree, interfere with his striking confidently into any new or original
path. That some remains of this bias, with a little leaning, perhaps,
towards school recollections[6], may have had a share in prompting his
preference of the Horatian Paraphrase, is by no means improbable;--at
least, that it was enough to lead him, untried as he had yet been in the
new path, to content himself, for the present, with following up his
success in the old. We have seen, indeed, that the manuscript of the two
Cantos of Childe Harold had, previously to its being placed in the hands
of Mr. Dallas, been submitted by the noble author to the perusal of some
friend--the first and only one, it appears, who at that time had seen
them. Who this fastidious critic was, Mr. Dallas has not mentioned; but
the sweeping tone of censure in which he conveyed his remarks was such
as, at any period of his career, would have disconcerted the judgment
of one, who, years after, in all the plenitude of his fame, confessed,
that "the depreciation of the lowest of mankind was more painful to him
than the applause of the highest was pleasing."[7]

Though on every thing that, after his arrival at the age of manhood, he
produced, some mark or other of the master-hand may be traced; yet, to
print the whole of his Paraphrase of Horace, which extends to nearly 800
lines, would be, at the best, but a questionable compliment to his
memory. That the reader, however, may be enabled to form some opinion of
a performance, which--by an error or caprice of judgment, unexampled,
perhaps, in the annals of literature--its author, for a time, preferred
to the sublime musings of Childe Harold, I shall here select a few such
passages from the Paraphrase as may seem calculated to give an idea as
well of its merits as its defects.

The opening of the p