He turn’d within his solitary hall,
And his high shadow shot along the wall:
There were the painted forms of other times—
’Twas all they left of virtues or of crimes,
Save vague tradition; and the gloomy vaults
That hid their dust, their foibles, and their faults,
And half a column of the pompous page,
That speeds the spacious tale from age to age;
Where history’s pen its praise or blame supplies
And lies like truth, and still most truly lies;
He wand’ring mused, and as the moonbeam shone
Through the dim lattice o’er the floor of stone,
And the high-fretted roof and saints that there
O’er Gothic windows knelt in pictured prayer;
Reflected in fantastic figures grew
Like life, but not like mortal life to view;
His bristling locks of sable, brow of gloom,
And the wide waving of his shaken plume
Glanced like a spectre’s attributes, and gave
His aspect all that terror gives the grave.

That Byron wrote best when he wrote of himself and of his own, has probably been already made sufficiently apparent.  In this respect he stands alone and apart from all other poets, and there will be occasion to show, that this peculiarity extended much farther over all his works, than merely to those which may be said to have required him to be thus personal.  The great distinction, indeed, of his merit consists in that singularity.  Shakspeare, in drawing the materials of his dramas from tales and history has, with wonderful art, given from his own invention and imagination the fittest and most appropriate sentiments and language; and admiration at the perfection with which he has accomplished this, can never be exhausted.  The difference between Byron and Shakspeare consists in the curious accident, if it may be so called, by which the former was placed in circumstances which taught him to feel in himself the very sentiments that he has ascribed to his characters.  Shakspeare created the feelings of his, and with such excellence, that they are not only probable to the situations, but give to the personifications the individuality of living persons.  Byron’s are scarcely less so; but with him there was no invention, only experience, and when he attempts to express more than he has himself known, he is always comparatively feeble.

CHAPTER XXXI

Table of Contents

Byron determines to reside abroad—Visits the Plain of Waterloo—State of his Feelings