in the transmutation of the fantastical Harold
into a practical strategist, financier, and soldier. No one ever lived
who, in the same space, more thoroughly ran the gauntlet of existence.
Having exhausted all other sources of vitality and intoxication--travel,
gallantry, and verse--it remained for the despairing poet to become a
hero. But he was also moved by a public passion, the genuineness of which
there is no reasonable ground to doubt. Like Alfieri and Rousseau, he had
taken for his motto, "I am of the opposition;" and, as Dante under a
republic called for a monarchy, Byron, under monarchies at home and
abroad, called for a commonwealth. Amid the inconsistencies of his
political sentiment, he had been consistent in so much love of liberty as
led him to denounce oppression, even when he had no great faith in the
oppressed--whether English, or Italians, or Greeks.

Byron regarded the established dynasties of the continent with a sincere
hatred. He talks of the "more than infernal tyranny" of the House of
Austria. To his fancy, as to Shelley's, New England is the star of the
future. Attracted by a strength or rather force of character akin to his
own, he worshipped Napoleon, even when driven to confess that "the hero
had sunk into a king." He lamented his overthrow; but, above all, that he
was beaten by "three stupid, legitimate old dynasty boobies of regular
sovereigns." "I write in ipecacuanha that the Bourbons are restored."
"What right have we to prescribe laws to France? Here we are retrograding
to the dull, stupid old system, balance of Europe--poising straws on
kings' noses, instead of wringing them off." "The king-times are fast
finishing. There will be blood shed like water, and tears like mist; but
the peoples will conquer in the end. I shall not live to see it, but I
foresee it." "Give me a republic. Look in the history of the earth--Rome,
Greece, Venice, Holland, France, America, our too short Commonwealth--and
compare it with what they did under masters."

His serious political verses are all in the strain of the lines on
Wellington--

Never had mortal man such opportunity--
Except Napoleon--or abused it more;
You might have freed fallen Europe from the unity
Of tyrants, and been blessed from shore to shore.

An enthusiasm for Italy, which survived many disappointments, dictated
some of the most impressive passages of his _Harold_, and inspired the
_Lament of Tasso_ and the _Ode on Venic