ot watched a youthful talent at its outset, will
never form for himself a perfect and really true appreciation of it."

Moore adds: "It is but justice to remark that the early verses of Lord
Byron give but little promise of those dazzling miracles of poesy with
which he afterward astonished and enchanted the world, however
distinguished they are by tenderness and grace.

"There is, indeed, one point of view in which these productions are
deeply and intrinsically interesting; as faithful reflections of his
character at that period of life, they enable us to judge of what he was
before any influences were brought to bear upon him, and so in them we
find him pictured exactly such as each anecdote of his boyish days
exhibits him--proud, daring, and passionate--resentful of slight or
injustice, but still more so in the cause of others than in his own; and
yet, with all this vehemence, docile and placable at the least touch of
a hand authorized by love to guide him. The affectionateness, indeed, of
his disposition, traceable as it is through every page of this volume,
is yet but faintly done justice to even by himself; his whole youth
being from earliest childhood a series of the most passionate
attachments, of those overflowings of the soul, both in friendship and
love, which are still more rarely responded to than felt, and which,
when checked or sent back upon the heart, are sure to turn into
bitterness."

While his soul expanded with the first rays of love which dawned upon
it, friendship too began to assert its influence over him. But in
continuing to observe in him the effects of incipient love, let us
remark that, while such precocious impressions are only with others the
natural development of physical instincts, they were, in Byron, also,
the expression of a soul that expands, of an amiability, of a tenderness
ever on the increase. Though sensible to physical beauty as he always
was through life, his principal attraction, however, was in that beauty
which expresses the beauty of the soul, without which condition no
physical perfection commanded his attention. We have seen what an
ethereal creature Miss Margaret Parker was. Miss Chaworth succeeded her
in Byron's affections, and was his second, if not third love if we
notice his youthful passion at nine years of age for Mary Duff. But his
third love was the occasion of great pain to him. Miss Chaworth was
heiress to the grounds and property of Annesley, which were in