osto, who was, it
seems, a victim to the same fair-weather alarms,--who, when on
horseback, would alight at the least appearance of danger, and on the
water was particularly timorous,--could yet, in the action between
the Pope's vessels and the Duke of Ferrara's, fight like a lion; and
in the same manner the courage of Lord Byron, as all his companions
in peril testify, was of that noblest kind which rises with the
greatness of the occasion, and becomes but the more self-collected
and resisting, the more imminent the danger.

In proposing to show that the distinctive properties of Lord Byron's
character, as well moral as literary, arose mainly from those two
great sources, the unexampled versatility of his powers and feelings,
and the facility with which he gave way to the impulses of both, it
had been my intention to pursue the subject still further in detail,
and to endeavour to trace throughout the various excellences and
defects, both of his poetry and his life, the operation of these two
dominant attributes of his nature. "No men," says Cowper, in speaking
of persons of a versatile turn of mind, "are better qualified for
companions in such a world as this than men of such temperament.
Every scene of life has two sides, a dark and a bright one; and the
mind that has an equal mixture of melancholy and vivacity is best of
all qualified for the contemplation of either." It would not be
difficult to show that to this readiness in reflecting all hues,
whether of the shadows or the lights of our variegated existence,
Lord Byron owed not only the great range of his influence as a poet,
but those powers of fascination which he possessed as a man. This
susceptibility, indeed, of immediate impressions, which in him was so
active, lent a charm, of all others the most attractive, to his
social intercourse, by giving to those who were, at the moment,
present, such ascendant influence, that they alone for the time
occupied all his thoughts and feelings, and brought whatever was most
agreeable in his nature into play.[1]

[Footnote 1: In reference to his power of adapting himself to all
sorts of society, and taking upon himself all varieties of character,
I find a passage in one of my early letters to him (from Ireland)
which, though it might be expressed, perhaps, in better taste, is
worth citing for its truth:--"Though I have not written, I have
seldom ceased to think of you; for you are that sort of being whom
every thing, h