ed the poor people by building castles; and when
they were built, they filled them with wicked men or rather devils, who
seized both men and women who they imagined had any money, threw them
into prison, and put them to more cruel tortures than the martyrs ever
endured. They suffocated some in mud, and suspended others by the feet,
or the head, or the thumbs, kindling fires below them. They squeezed the
heads of some with knotted cords till they pierced their brains, while
they threw others into dungeons swarming with serpents, snakes, and
toads.' But it would be cruel to put the reader to the pain of perusing
the remainder of the description."--_Henry's Hist_. edit. 1805, vol.
vii. p. 346.]

* * * * *

LORD BYRON.

Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott are among writers now living[A] the two,
who would carry away a majority of suffrages as the greatest geniuses of
the age. The former would, perhaps, obtain the preference with the fine
gentlemen and ladies (squeamishness apart)--the latter with the critics
and the vulgar. We shall treat of them in the same connection, partly
on account of their distinguished pre-eminence, and partly because they
afford a complete contrast to each other. In their poetry, in their
prose, in their politics, and in their tempers no two men can be more
unlike. If Sir Walter Scott may be thought by some to have been

"Born universal heir to all humanity,"

it is plain Lord Byron can set up no such pretension. He is, in a
striking degree, the creature of his own will. He holds no communion
with his kind; but stands alone, without mate or fellow--

"As if a man were author of himself,
And owned no other kin."

He is like a solitary peak, all access to which is cut off not more by
elevation than distance. He is seated on a lofty eminence, "cloud-capt,"
or reflecting the last rays of setting suns; and in his poetical moods,
reminds us of the fabled Titans, retired to a ridgy steep, playing on
their Pan's-pipes, and taking up ordinary men and things in their hands
with haughty indifference. He raises his subject to himself, or tramples
on it: he neither stoops to, nor loses himself in it. He exists not by
sympathy, but by antipathy. He scorns all things, even himself. Nature
must come to him to sit for her picture--he does not go to her. She must
consult his time, his convenience, and his humour; and wear a _sombre_
or a fantastic garb, or