Of life, and fretting passions waste the heart no more.'"

By his Lordship's Will, a copy of which will be found in the
Appendix, he bequeathed to his executors in trust for the benefit of
his sister, Mrs. Leigh, the monies arising from the sale of all his
real estates at Rochdale and elsewhere, together with such part of
his other property as was not settled upon Lady Byron and his
daughter Ada, to be by Mrs. Leigh enjoyed, free from her husband's
control, during her life, and, after her decease, to be inherited by
her children.

We have now followed to its close a life which, brief as was its
span, may be said, perhaps, to have comprised within itself a greater
variety of those excitements and interest which spring out of the
deep workings of passion and of intellect than any that the pen of
biography has ever before commemorated. As there still remain among
the papers of my friend some curious gleanings which, though in the
abundance of our materials I have not hitherto found a place for
them, are too valuable towards the illustration of his character to
be lost, I shall here, in selecting them for the reader, avail myself
of the opportunity of trespassing, for the last time, on his patience
with a few general remarks.

It must have been observed, throughout these pages, and by some,
perhaps, with disappointment, that into the character of Lord Byron,
as a poet, there has been little, if any, critical examination; but
that, content with expressing generally the delight which, in common
with all, I derive from his poetry, I have left the task of analysing
the sources from which this delight springs to others.[1] In thus
evading, if it must be so considered, one of my duties as a
biographer, I have been influenced no less by a sense of my own
inaptitude for the office of critic than by recollecting with what
assiduity, throughout the whole of the poet's career, every new
rising of his genius was watched from the great observatories of
Criticism, and the ever changing varieties of its course and
splendour tracked out and recorded with a degree of skill and
minuteness which has left but little for succeeding observers to
discover. It is, moreover, into the character and conduct of Lord
Byron, as a man, not distinct from, but forming, on the contrary, the
best illustration of his character, as a writer, that it has been the
more immediate purpose of these volumes to enquire; and if, in the
course of them, any satisfa