the
literary mind (_if_ mine be a literary mind), I will answer them fairly,
or give a reason for _not_, good--bad--or indifferent. At present, I am
paying the penalty of having helped to spoil the public taste; for, as
long as I wrote in the false exaggerated style of youth and the times in
which we live, they applauded me to the very echo; and within these few
years, when I have endeavoured at better things, and written what I
suspect to have the principle of duration in it: the Church, the
Chancellor, and all men, even to my grand patron, Francis Jeffrey, Esq.,
of the _Edinburgh Review_, have risen up against me, and my later
publications. Such is Truth! men dare not look her in the face, except by
degrees; they mistake her for a Gorgon, instead of knowing her to be
Minerva. I do not mean to apply this mythological simile to my own
endeavours, but I have only to turn over a few pages of your volumes to
find innumerable and far more illustrious instances. It is lucky that I am
of a temper not to be easily turned aside, though by no means difficult to
irritate. But I am making a dissertation, instead of writing a letter. I
write to you from the Villa Dupuy, near Leghorn, with the islands of Elba
and Corsica visible from my balcony, and my old friend the Mediterranean
rolling blue at my feet. As long as I retain my feeling and my passion for
Nature, I can partly soften or subdue my other passions, and resist or
endure those of others.

"I have the honour to be, truly,

"Your obliged and faithful servant,

"NOEL BYRON.

"To I. D'Israeli, Esq."

The ill-starred expedition to Greece followed this letter.

* * * * *

This work, conceived in youth, executed by the research of manhood, and
associated with the noblest feelings of our nature, is an humble but
fervent tribute, offered to the memory of those Master Spirits from whose
labours, as BURKE eloquently describes, "their country receives permanent
service: those who know how to make the silence of their closets more
beneficial to the world than all the noise and bustle of courts, senates,
and camps."

LITERARY CHARACTER.

CHAPTER I.

Of Literary Characters, and of the Lovers of Literature and Art.

Diffused over enlightened Europe, an order of men has arisen, who,
uninfluenced by the interests or the passions which give an impulse to the
other classes of society, are connected by the secret links of congenial
purs