ark. It is
somewhat remarkable, that, excited as he was by the attack of the
reviewers, and possessing, at all times, such rapid powers of
composition, he should have allowed so long an interval to elapse
between the aggression and the revenge. But the importance of his next
move in literature seems to have been fully appreciated by him. He saw
that his chances of future eminence now depended upon the effort he
was about to make, and therefore deliberately collected all his
energies for the spring. Among the preparatives by which he
disciplined his talent to the task was a deep study of the writings of
Pope; and I have no doubt that from this period may be dated the
enthusiastic admiration which he ever after cherished for this great
poet,--an admiration which at last extinguished in him, after one or
two trials, all hope of pre-eminence in the same track, and drove him
thenceforth to seek renown in fields more open to competition.

The misanthropic mood of mind into which he had fallen at this time,
from disappointed affections and thwarted hopes, made the office of
satirist but too congenial and welcome to his spirit. Yet it is
evident that this bitterness existed far more in his fancy than his
heart; and that the sort of relief he now found in making war upon the
world arose much less from the indiscriminate wounds he dealt around,
than from the new sense of power he became conscious of in dealing
them, and by which he more than recovered his former station in his
own esteem. In truth, the versatility and ease with which, as shall
presently be shown, he could, on the briefest consideration, shift
from praise to censure, and, sometimes, almost as rapidly, from
censure to praise, shows how fanciful and transient were the
impressions under which he, in many instances, pronounced his
judgments; and though it may in some degree deduct from the weight of
his eulogy, absolves him also from any great depth of malice in his
Satire.

His coming of age, in 1809, was celebrated at Newstead by such
festivities as his narrow means and society could furnish. Besides the
ritual roasting of an ox, there was a ball, it seems, given on the
occasion,--of which the only particular I could collect, from the old
domestic who mentioned it, was, that Mr. Hanson, the agent of her
lord, was among the dancers. Of Lord Byron's own method of
commemorating the day, I find the following curious record in a letter
written from Genoa in 1822:--"Di