The Liberal stopped with the fourth number, I believe.  It disappointed not merely literary men in general, but even the most special admirers of the talents of the contributors.  The main defect of the work was a lack of knowledge.  Neither in style nor genius, nor even in general ability, was it wanting; but where it showed learning it was not of a kind in which the age took much interest.  Moreover, the manner and cast of thinking of all the writers in it were familiar to the public, and they were too few in number to variegate their pages with sufficient novelty.  But the main cause of the failure was the antipathy formed and fostered against it before it appeared.  It was cried down, and it must be acknowledged that it did not much deserve a better fate.

With The Liberal I shall close my observations on the works of Lord Byron.  They are too voluminous to be examined even in the brief and sketchy manner in which I have considered those which are deemed the principal.  Besides, they are not, like them, all characteristic of the author, though possessing great similarity in style and thought to one another.  Nor would such general criticism accord with the plan of this work.  Lord Byron was not always thinking of himself; like other authors, he sometimes wrote from imaginary circumstances; and often fancied both situations and feelings which had no reference to his own, nor to his experience.  But were the matter deserving of the research, I am persuaded, that with Mr Moore’s work, and the poet’s original journals, notes, and letters, innumerable additions might be made to the list of passages which the incidents of his own life dictated.