it is
attempted to determine the probability of the wild scenes and wilder
adventurers of his tales, by the circumstances and characters of the
law-regulated system of our diurnal affairs. Probability is a
standard formed by experience, and it is not surprising that the
anchorets of libraries should object to the improbability of The
Corsair, and yet acknowledge the poetical power displayed in the
composition; for it is a work which could only have been written by
one who had himself seen or heard on the spot of transactions similar
to those he has described. No course of reading could have supplied
materials for a narration so faithfully descriptive of the accidents
to which an AEgean pirate is exposed as The Corsair. Had Lord Byron
never been out of England, the production of a work so appropriate in
reflection, so wild in spirit, and so bold in invention, as in that
case it would have been, would have entitled him to the highest
honours of original conception, or been rejected as extravagant;
considered as the result of things seen, and of probabilities
suggested, by transactions not uncommon in the region where his
genius gathered the ingredients of its sorceries, more than the half
of its merits disappear, while the other half brighten with the
lustre of truth.

The manners, the actions, and the incidents were new to the English
mind; but to the inhabitant of the Levant they have long been
familiar, and the traveller who visits that region will hesitate to
admit that Lord Byron possessed those creative powers, and that
discernment of dark bosoms for which he is so much celebrated;
because he will see there how little of invention was necessary to
form such heroes as Conrad, and how much the actual traffic of life
and trade is constantly stimulating enterprise and bravery. But let
it not, therefore, be supposed, that I would undervalue either the
genius of the poet, or the merits of the poem, in saying so, for I do
think a higher faculty has been exerted in The Corsair than in Childe
Harold. In the latter, only actual things are described, freshly and
vigorously as they were seen, and feelings expressed eloquently as
they were felt; but in the former, the talent of combination has been
splendidly employed. The one is a view from nature, the other is a
composition both from nature and from history.

Lara, which appeared soon after The Corsair, is an evident supplement
to it; the description of the hero corr