e truth; but it is truer than it seems. He was well
aware that Byron had sate for the portrait of Childe Harold. He had
begun by calling his hero Childe Burun, and the few particulars which he
gives of Childe Burun's past were particulars, in the main exact
particulars, of Byron's own history. He had no motive for concealment,
for, so little did he know himself, he imagined that he was not writing
for publication, that he had done with authorship. Even when the mood
had passed, it was the imitation of the _Ars Poetica_, not _Childe
Harold_, which he was eager to publish; and when _Childe Harold_ had
been offered to and accepted by a publisher, he desired and proposed
that it should appear anonymously. He had not as yet come to the pass of
displaying "the pageant of his bleeding heart" before the eyes of the
multitude. But though he shrank from the obvious and inevitable
conclusion that Childe Harold was Byron in disguise, and idly
"disclaimed" all connection, it was true that he had intended to draw a
fictitious character, a being whom he may have feared he might one day
become, but whom he did not recognize as himself. He was not sated, he
was not cheerless, he was not unamiable. He was all a-quiver with youth
and enthusiasm and the joy of great living. He had left behind him
friends whom he knew were not "the flatterers of the festal
hour"--friends whom he returned to mourn and nobly celebrate. Byron was
not Harold, but Harold was an ideal Byron, the creature and avenger of
his pride, which haunted and pursued its presumptuous creator to the
bitter end.

_Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_ was reviewed, or rather advertised, by
Dallas, in the _Literary Panorama_ for March, 1812. To the reviewer's
dismay, the article, which appeared before the poem was out, was shown
to Byron, who was paying a short visit to his old friends at Harrow.
Dallas quaked, but "as it proved no bad advertisement," he escaped
censure. "The blunder passed unobserved, eclipsed by the dazzling
brilliancy of the object which had caused it" (_Recollections_, p. 221).

Of the greater reviews, the _Quarterly_ (No. xiii., March, 1812) was
published on May 12, and the _Edinburgh_ (No. 38, June, 1812) was
published on August 5, 1812.

NOTES ON THE MSS. OF _CHILDE HAROLD_.

I.

The original MS. of the First and Second Cantos of _Childe Harold_,
consisting of ninety-one folios bound up with a single blui