geable against him.

'The last poem he wrote was produced upon his birthday, not many weeks
before he died. We consider it as one of the finest and most touching
effusions of his noble genius. We think he who reads it, and can ever
after bring himself to regard even the worst transgressions that have
been charged against Lord Byron with any feelings but those of humble
sorrow and manly pity, is not deserving of the name of man. The deep and
passionate struggles with the inferior elements of his nature (and ours)
which it records; the lofty thirsting after purity; the heroic devotion
of a soul half weary of life, because unable to believe in its own powers
to live up to what it so intensely felt to be, and so reverentially
honoured as, the right; the whole picture of this mighty spirit, often
darkened, but never sunk,--often erring, but never ceasing to see and to
worship the beauty of virtue; the repentance of it; the anguish; the
aspiration, almost stifled in despair,--the whole of this is such a
whole, that we are sure no man can read these solemn verses too often;
and we recommend them for repetition, as the best and most conclusive of
all possible answers whenever the name of Byron is insulted by those who
permit themselves to forget nothing, either in his life or in his
writings, but the good.'--[1825.]

LETTERS OF LADY BYRON TO H. C. ROBINSON

The following letters of Lady Byron's are reprinted from the Memoirs of
H. C. Robinson. They are given that the reader may form some judgment of
the strength and activity of her mind, and the elevated class of subjects
upon which it habitually dwelt.

LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.

'DEC. 31, 1853.

'DEAR MR. CRABB ROBINSON,--I have an inclination, if I were not afraid of
trespassing on your time (but you can put my letter by for any leisure
moment), to enter upon the history of a character which I think less
appreciated than it ought to be. Men, I observe, do not understand men
in certain points, without a woman's interpretation. Those points, of
course, relate to feelings.

'Here is a man taken by most of those who come in his way either for Dry-
as-Dust, Matter-of-fact, or for a "vain visionary." There are,
doubtless, some defective or excessive characteristics which give rise to
those impressions.

'My acquaintance was made, oddly enough, with him twenty-seven years ago.
A pauper said to me of him, "He's the poor man's