Combined with vast power, Lord Byron possessed, beyond all question, the greatest degree of originality of any poet of this age.  In this rare quality he has no parallel in any age.  All other poets and inventive authors are measured in their excellence by the accuracy with which they fit sentiments appropriate not only to the characters they create, but to the situations in which they place them: the works of Lord Byron display the opposite to this, and with the most extraordinary splendour.  He endows his creations with his own qualities; he finds in the situations in which he places them only opportunities to express what he has himself felt or suffered; and yet he mixes so much probability in the circumstances, that they are always eloquently proper.  He does everything, as it were, the reverse of other poets; in the air and sea, which have been in all times the emblems of change and the similitudes of inconstancy, he has discovered the very principles of permanency.  The ocean in his view, not by its vastness, its unfathomable depths, and its limitless extent, becomes an image of deity, by its unchangeable character!

The variety of his productions present a prodigious display of power.  In his short career he has entitled himself to be ranked in the first class of the British poets for quantity alone.  By Childe Harold, and his other poems of the same mood, he has extended the scope of feeling, made us acquainted with new trains of association, awakened sympathies which few suspected themselves of possessing; and he has laid open darker recesses in the bosom than were previously supposed to exist.  The deep and dreadful caverns of remorse had long been explored but he was the first to visit the bottomless pit of satiety.

The delineation of that Promethean fortitude which defied conscience, as he has shown it in Manfred, is his greatest achievement.  The terrific fables of Marlowe and of Goethe, in their respective versions of the legend of Faustus, had disclosed the utmost writhings which remorse in the fiercest of its torments can express; but what are those Laocoon agonies to the sublime serenity of Manfred.  In the power, the originality, and the genius combined, of that unexampled performance, Lord Byron has placed himself on an equality with Milton.  The Satan of the Paradise Lost is animated by motives, and dignified by an eternal enterprise.  He hath purposes of infinite prospect to perform, and an immeasurable ambition to satisfy.  Manfred hath neither purpose nor ambition, nor any desire that seeks gratification.  He hath done a deed which severs him from hope, as everlastingly as the apostacy with the angels has done Satan.  He acknowledges no contrition to bespeak commiseration, he complains of no wrong to justify revenge, for he feels none; he despises sympathy, and almost glories in his perdition.