n this period, commonly of innocence and playfulness, rarely
to have evinced any symptom of generous feeling. Silent rages, moody
sullenness, and revenge are the general characteristics of his
conduct as a boy.

He was, undoubtedly, delicately susceptible of impressions from the
beauties of nature, for he retained recollections of the scenes which
interested his childish wonder, fresh and glowing, to his latest
days; nor have there been wanting plausible theories to ascribe the
formation of his poetical character to the contemplation of those
romantic scenes. But, whoever has attended to the influential causes
of character will reject such theories as shallow, and betraying
great ignorance of human nature. Genius of every kind belongs to
some innate temperament; it does not necessarily imply a particular
bent, because that may possibly be the effect of circumstances: but,
without question, the peculiar quality is inborn, and particular to
the individual. All hear and see much alike; but there is an
undefinable though wide difference between the ear of the musician,
or the eye of the painter, compared with the hearing and seeing
organs of ordinary men; and it is in something like that difference
in which genius consists. Genius is, however, an ingredient of mind
more easily described by its effects than by its qualities. It is as
the fragrance, independent of the freshness and complexion of the
rose; as the light on the cloud; as the bloom on the cheek of beauty,
of which the possessor is unconscious until the charm has been seen
by its influence on others; it is the internal golden flame of the
opal; a something which may be abstracted from the thing in which it
appears, without changing the quality of its substance, its form, or
its affinities. I am not, therefore, disposed to consider the idle
and reckless childhood of Byron as unfavourable to the development of
his genius; but, on the contrary, inclined to think, that the
indulgence of his mother, leaving him so much to the accidents of
undisciplined impression, was calculated to cherish associations
which rendered them, in the maturity of his powers, ingredients of
spell that ruled his memory.

It is singular, and I am not aware it has been before noticed, that
with all his tender and impassioned apostrophes to beauty and love,
Byron has in no instance, not even in the freest passages of Don
Juan, associated either the one or the other with sensual images.