ord, for the rebellion was not against God, but Jupiter, that is,
against the State, Church, and society of Byron's day; against George
III., the Tory cabinet of Lord Castlereigh, the Duke of Wellington, the
bench of Bishops, London gossip, the British Constitution, and British
cant. In these poems of Byron, and in his dramatic experiments,
_Manfred_ and _Cain_, there is a single figure--the figure of Byron under
various masks--and one pervading mood, a restless and sardonic gloom, a
weariness of life, a love of solitude, and a melancholy exaltation in the
presence of the wilderness and the sea. Byron's hero is always
represented as a man originally noble, whom some great wrong, by others,
or some mysterious crime of his own, has blasted and embittered, and who
carries about the world a seared heart and a somber brow. Harold--who
may stand as a type of all his heroes--has run "through sin's labyrinth"
and feeling the "fullness of satiety," is drawn abroad to roam, "the
wandering exile of his own dark mind." The loss of a capacity for pure,
unjaded emotion is the constant burden of Byron's lament.

"No more, no more, O never more on me
The freshness of the heart shall fall like dew."

and again,

"O could I feel as I have felt--or be what I have been,
Or weep as I could once have wept, o'er many a vanished scene;
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As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish tho' they be,
So, midst the withered waste of life, those tears would flow to me."

This mood was sincere in Byron; but by cultivating it, and posing too
long in one attitude, he became self-conscious and theatrical, and much
of his serious poetry has a false ring. His example infected the minor
poetry of the time, and it was quite natural that Thackeray--who
represented a generation that had a very different ideal of the
heroic--should be provoked into describing Byron as "a big, sulky dandy."

Byron was well fitted by birth and temperament to be the spokesman of
this fierce discontent. He inherited from his mother a haughty and
violent temper, and profligate tendencies from his father. He was
through life a spoiled child, whose main characteristic was willfulness.
He liked to shock people by exaggerating his wickedness, or by perversely
maintaining the wrong side of a dispute. But he had traits of bravery
and generosity. Women loved him, and he made strong friends. There was
a careless charm about him which fascinated natur