n. All these peculiarities, with his
caprices, and something inexplicable in the cast of his metaphysics,
while they served to awaken interest, contributed little to
conciliate esteem. He was often strangely rapt--it may have been
from his genius; and, had its grandeur and darkness been then
divulged, susceptible of explanation; but, at the time, it threw, as
it were, around him the sackcloth of penitence. Sitting amid the
shrouds and rattlins, in the tranquillity of the moonlight, churming
an inarticulate melody, he seemed almost apparitional, suggesting dim
reminiscences of him who shot the albatross. He was as a mystery in
a winding-sheet, crowned with a halo.

The influence of the incomprehensible phantasma which hovered about
Lord Byron has been more or less felt by all who ever approached him.
That he sometimes came out of the cloud, and was familiar and
earthly, is true; but his dwelling was amid the murk and the mist,
and the home of his spirit in the abysm of the storm, and the hiding-
places of guilt. He was, at the time of which I am speaking,
scarcely two-and-twenty, and could claim no higher praise than having
written a clever worldly-minded satire; and yet it was impossible,
even then, to reflect on the bias of his mind, as it was revealed by
the casualties of conversation, without experiencing a presentiment,
that he was destined to execute some singular and ominous purpose.
The description he has given of Manfred in his youth was of himself.

My spirit walk'd not with the souls of men,
Nor look'd upon the earth with human eyes;
The thirst of their ambition was not mine;
The aim of their existence was not mine.
My joys, my griefs, my passions, and my powers,
Made me a stranger. Though I wore the form,
I had no sympathy with breathing flesh.
My joy was in the wilderness--to breathe
The difficult air of the iced mountain's top.
Where the birds dare not build, nor insect's wing
Flit o'er the herbless granite; or to plunge
Into the torrent, and to roll along
On the swift whirl of the new-breaking wave
Of river, stream, or ocean, in their flow--
In these my early strength exulted; or
To follow through the night the moving moon,
The stars, and their development; or catch
The dazzling lightnings till my eyes grew dim;
Or to look listening on the scatter'd leaves,
While autumn winds were at their evening song;--
These were my pastimes--and to be alone.
For if the beings, of whom I was one--
Hati