uth
being, from earliest childhood, a series of the most passionate
attachments,--of those overflowings of the soul, both in friendship
and love, which are still more rarely responded to than felt, and
which, when checked or sent back upon the heart, are sure to turn into
bitterness. We have seen also, in some of his early unpublished poems,
how apparent, even through the doubts that already clouded them, are
those feelings of piety which a soul like his could not but possess,
and which, when afterwards diverted out of their legitimate channel,
found a vent in the poetical worship of nature, and in that shadowy
substitute for religion which superstition offers. When, in addition,
too, to these traits of early character, we find scattered through
his youthful poems such anticipations of the glory that awaited
him,--such, alternately, proud and saddened glimpses into the future,
as if he already felt the elements of something great within him, but
doubted whether his destiny would allow him to bring it forth,--it is
not wonderful that, with the whole of his career present to our
imaginations, we should see a lustre round these first puerile
attempts not really their own, but shed back upon them from the bright
eminence which he afterwards attained; and that, in our indignation
against the fastidious blindness of the critic, we should forget that
he had not then the aid of this reflected charm, with which the
subsequent achievements of the poet now irradiate all that bears his
name.

The effect this criticism produced upon him can only be conceived by
those who, besides having an adequate notion of what most poets would
feel under such an attack, can understand all that there was in the
temper and disposition of Lord Byron to make him feel it with tenfold
more acuteness than others. We have seen with what feverish anxiety he
awaited the verdicts of all the minor Reviews, and, from his
sensibility to the praise of the meanest of these censors, may guess
how painfully he must have writhed under the sneers of the highest. A
friend, who found him in the first moments of excitement after reading
the article, enquired anxiously whether he had just received a
challenge?--not knowing how else to account for the fierce defiance of
his looks. It would, indeed, be difficult for sculptor or painter to
imagine a subject of more fearful beauty than the fine countenance of
the young poet must have exhibited in the collected energy of th