EVERY work that tends to throw light on Lord Byron's character is of great value; first, for the extreme interest of such a moral study; and secondly (if it be possible to force on people the conviction drawn from the writer's experience), for placing in the strongest point of view the folly, not to say cruelty, of harsh judgment, founded half on your own imaginary premises, and half on the mere gossip of the day, which is generally false, and always spiteful-false, from its love of the marvellous; and spiteful, from that consolation our own faults seem to derive from those of others. Literary fame has always been purchased at a dear price; genius has either had to complain of poverty and neglect, or of envy and misrepresentation-the leaves of the laurel may be given, "but the trail of the serpent is over them all." And in the present day, especially, the successful writer has to suffer under the false verdict of incompetent judges, or the still falser of interested ones; the feelings he avows are denied or misconstrued, those he conceals brought forward for reproach or ridicule; and while we grudge, hesitate, and refute, aught that is mentioned as praiseworthy, there is nothing too improbable for belief when it requires blame. Lord Byron's life is perhaps

+ Conversations on Religion with Lord Byron. By the late James Kennedy, M.D. London, 1830. VOL. V. B

as discouraging a specimen of literary fame as ever gave a warning, and in vain; it began, and it ended, in bitterness. It is curious to observe how little the " Edinburgh Review" has led public opinion in respect to works of imagination: our principal poets have made their way in opposition to the critical judgment which pronounced sentence of death on their efforts; Wordsworth, Montgomery, Coleridge, &c., were alike jeered and run down; but no one now denies their poetical pre-eminence. Keen, lively, logical, French in his philosophy, and its brilliancy of expression, Jeffrey had neither feeling nor imagination strongly developed in himself, and was therefore, by nature, incapable of doing justice to these qualities in others; and when his praise was given, it was in a spirit of nationality or private friendship. The effects of sarcasm, bitter, personal, and crushing, beyond what could ever be called for by a slight volume of youthful poems-for we hold that the critic will not err too much on the side of mercy, who takes a general tone of kindliness and encouragement towards the efforts of the young-censure so contemptuous, must have cut deep, and left its scar in a mind conscious of its own high powers, such as Byron's certainly was. To his first successful defiance of public opinion, for such it was to him, in the "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," may, we think, be