The Sun.
London, England, 1831-01-13 00:00:00

LITERATtiRt.

MOORE'S LIFE OF BYRON, VOL. Ili ----LONDON

183 h
We have just concluded the second volume
of these fascinating memoirs, which we have
little hesitation in Assigning a foremost rank
among biographical works. In point of minute
developement of character we know no memoirs
equal to them, for the author, instead of show-
ing oft' him elf at the expense of his hero, steps
cut of the beaten track, and places himself in
the back ground in order that the broad light of
observotc.on may fall full and uninterrupted on
r,:he subject of his biography. In other words,
Lord Byron is everywhere allowed to tell his
own story and develope his own character with-
out " let or hindrance" from Mr. Moore, who
merely connects disjointed fragments, illustrates
obscure facts and remarks, and enacts the

part ,-,,ommentator. Our conviction on clos-
ing these very delightful memoirs is, that Lord
Byron has been a man " more sinned against
than sinning." That he had numerous faults,
we are willing to allow ; that he was " impiger,
iracundus, biers, vinosus, amator," we also
readily admit ; but that he was ever, even in the
most indefensible portion of his life, the utterly
depraved being for which the world gave, awl
still gives, him credit, we altogether deny. With
a little more hypocrisy, and a little less assump-
tion, he might have passed for as moral a man
as any of his cotemporaries ; but his candour,
and above all his enmity to cant, whether lite-
rary, political, or religious, ranged in the ranks
of his enemies the majority of mankind, who
dreaded his sarcasm, and resented his sincerity,
as an indirect imputation on their own hypo-
crisy. The key to Lord Byron's infirmities may
be found in his own terse and forcible descrip-
tion of Lara. From earliest youth up to the
period of his death he was " lord of him-
self, that heritage of woe." In this respect,
he bears a striking resemblance to Savage, wh o
has also lamepted the same absence of any kind
friend to train his early youth, in language of
equal energy. Lord Byron, be it remembered,
never knew the meaning of the word home. This
little term, so full of pleasurable associations to
the majority of our English youth ; so expres-
sive of tenderness, comfort, hope, and the long
muster of social virtues, was to him a dead letter.
He was thrown abroad on the world at a period
of life when others are still in a state of pupillage,
without parents, without connections, without
prospects, and almost without hope. He stood
on the threshold of society without encourage-
ment to enter its portals. A nobleman without
fortune ; a man of education without the means
of turning it to account; a senator without a
friendly hand to cheer his progress ;—was it
wonderful under these discouraging circum-
stances, that his mind should have been preju-
diced ; that the flow of his kindly feelings being
checked at the very time when the stream was
fullest, and should have been allowed to run freely,
the channel should have become stagnant and
covered with weeds of impure growth ? He
must be ignorant of human nature who supposes
that early disappointments ever wholly cease to
throw their colouring over life ; after successes
may indeed blunt and partially neutralize their ill
effect, but the cloud will at times return, and the
mind revert with acuteness to the recollection of
its early disappointments ;

medio de fonte leporum
Surgit amari aliquid quod et ipsis floribus angat.

Had Byron, the stern, disciplined, experienced
man of the world, alone been unfortunate, the
case would have been materially altered ; he
could then have grappled with his wrongs, and
estimated them at their proper value ; but it
was Byron the boy—Byron the embryo poet—
with all the sensitiveness, shyness, and enthusi-
asm of genius kindling within him and longing
for its natural vent—this was the glorious being
whose first and freshest feelings were checked
and thrown back upon themselves, and whose
first leap into the world was made, as it were, at
random, and in the dark. In what a different
fashion do the majority of our modern young
aristocrats enter upon the business of life !
Trumpets and shawns herald their approach ;
a thundering flourish of drums announces the
advent of a new literary or political Mes-
siah. After giving birth to a dull poem at
the University, and a still duller speech in the
Senate, the noble candidate for notoriety takes
at once a prominent station in society ; is
" petted and dandled into a legislator ;" and if
a Whig, is lauded in the Edinburgh, if a Tory,
in the Quarterly Review. Byron, as we have
shown, experienced none of this flattering en-
couragement. Though an aristocat, he was
compelled to fight his own way to fame without
a second to back him in the unequal struggle.
His first literary attempts were treated with the
most stinging ridicule ; his first introduction
to the House of Lords accompanied by cir-
cumstances of peculiar mortification. We have
mentioned these facts in order to account for
that lurking distrust in every thing and every
body, which notwithstanding the natural can-
dour of his disposition never wholly deserted
Lord Byron, as well as for that deep, and but
too often splenetic, melancholy, from which even
in the gayest company he was never altogether
free.

We now come to the subject more imme-
diately before us. The present volume com-
mences with the arrival of Lord Byron in Swit-
zerland, in 1815, and concludes with his death
at Missolonghi, in 1823. His memoirs during
this period are chiefly carried on by means of
his own letters, which like " Don Juan," are
pathetic--satirical--sprightly —anecdotical--
critical—in short, " every thing by turns, and
nothing long."—As faithful reflections of
the heart of the writer, we know of no-
thing in any language equal to them. They
show what the inner man was as well as the
man of the world, in his egotism—his craving
for notoriety—no matter of what nature it might
be—his pride—his sensitiveness—and, above all,
in that strange mixture of aristocratic and de_
mocratic principle which kept his judgment in a
state of perpetual oscillation. As a letter writer