gayety of temper gleams
through it and renders it still more interesting....

"A far different object of interest, yet still of
interest, checkered with pity and disapprobation, is
Lord Byron, whose present situation seems to rival all
that ever has been said and sung of the misfortunes of a
too irritable imagination. The last part of _Childe
Harold_ intimates a terrible state of mind, and with all
the power and genius which characterized his former
productions, the present seems to indicate a more
serious and desperate degree of misanthropy. I own I was
not much moved by the scorn of the world which his first
poems implied, because I know it is a humor of mind
which those whom fortune has spoilt by indulgence, or
irritated by reverses, are apt to assume, because it
looks melancholy and gentlemanlike, and becomes a bard
as well as being desperately in love, or very fond of
the sunrise, though he lies in bed till noon, or anxious
in recommending to others to catch cold by visiting old
abbeys by moonlight, which he never happened to see
under the chaste moonbeam himself; but this strange poem
goes much deeper, and either the Demon of Misanthropy is
in full possession of him, or he has already invited ten
guests, equally desperate, to the swept and garnished
mansion of Harold's understanding."--_Familiar Letters_,
vol. i. p. 369.)]

[Footnote 50: [This is probably the "expression of
kindness" which encouraged Murray to beg Scott to review
in the _Quarterly_ Byron's recently published volumes,
_Childe Harold, Canto III._, and _The Prisoner of
Chillon, a Dream, and Other Poems_. The request was
promptly complied with, and the article appeared in the
next number issued (_dated_ October, 1816),--a review
full of generous, and also judicious, appreciation. For
some reason, hard now to discover, unless it were the
kindliness of the writer's tone towards the younger
poet, some of Lady Byron's friends, among whom was
Joa