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

we look on Lord Byron as the first in the
language. In wit and sarcasm Lord Orford is
a fool compared to him ; Johnson a pompous
twaddler ; Gibbon a formal pedant. His ease is
matchless—he is ever familiar, but never vulgar
or common-place ; ardent as a conflagration when
his pride or his passions are roused ; graphic as
Hogarth in description of character ; as witty,
but less artificial, than Congreve. His letters to
Murray are perfect gems in their way. At one
moment friendly and familiar ; at another polite
and condescending ; now ironical ; now dull and
business-like ; but in every instance original and
characteristic. What can possibly be more di-
lightful than Byron's treaty with the bibliopole for a
good price for " Sardanapalus ;'' his mock-heroic
wrath at being put off with pounds where he had
expected guineas ; his description to Moore of
his Venetian mistress Mariana, the wife of a

tradesman, or as his Lordship humourously
designates him, a " Merchant of Venice ;" his
reasons for studying the crabbed Armenian
language, because his " mind wanted something
craggy to break upon ;" his intention of writing
an " Elegy on the recovery" of his enemy,
Lady N— ; his anecdote of an Irishman's
constancy to an Italian Marchesa, who by way
of return " reinstated him in all the rights of.
wrong ;" his details of the epidemic Venetian
fever, "of which the physicians change the
name annually, in order to despatch people the
sooner ;" and, above all, his history of his fit of
indigestion, brought on by eating cockles, which
reduced soul and hod) to torpidity ?—" I
tried to rouse them, yet could not—and this is

,he soul 1 I should believe that it was married

to the body if they did not sympathise so much
with each other. If the one rose and the other

fell, it would be a sign that they longed for the
natural state of divorce. As it is, they seem to
draw together like post-horses."
Of a far different character, but equally ori-
ginal, are Lord Byron's letters to Scott
and Shelley. To the former he writes with the
practised ease of a gentleman and a man of the
world, desirous not to commit himself by saying
too much ; and to the latter with a friendly but
respectful deference, which shows the high sense
he entertained of Shelley's intellect. Indeed
nothing is more conspicuous throughout Lord
Byron's correspondence, than the consummate
sagacity with which he adapts himself to the
prejudices and feelings of those whom he
addresses. To Scott he is the polite yet
somewhat staid gentleman ; to Shelley the
scholar and the poet ; to Murray the man
of business, the patron, the dandy, and
even the buffoon ; to Moore, the friend, the
wit, and " the hail-fellow well met."
Of Byron's daily habits when abroad we
have a minute and lengthened description. At
Venice, where his dissipation was unbounded,
and not always of the most poetic character, he
was regular only in his irregularity ; but at Ra-

venna, Pisa, and Genoa, we are informed that
he rose between two and three o'clock ; break-
fasted off a slice of cold toast and a cup of green
tea, without milk or sugar; rode out for health

between four and five ; read till dinner-time, at
six or seven ; received visits from his friends
till night-fall ; and then closeted himself, with a
glass of some sort of spirits beside him, in his
study till four or five o'clock in the mornirg.
His latter works all prove that this account is
correct. They breathe a strange, excited spirit,
are replete with midnight gloom—solemn re-

flection—the wildness—the fever—and even the
incoherency of intoxication. There is little
or no repose or equability in them ; the
transitions are from the broadest light to
the deepest shadow ; from the splendor of
Elysium to the raven gloom of Avernus.—
No poet could have penned " Don Juan" by

daylight, when the equable and the common-
place, derived from time and circumstance, usually
predominate in the mind. The poem is alto-

gether an incubus, a dream of the fancy, born of
indigestion, fostered by fever, and brought to
maturity by favouring midnight.
With Byron's literary opinions his biogra-
pher has made us equally familiar. He professed
to dislike Shakspeare,—this was a mere whim
of the moment ;—thought our elder dramatists
little short of barbarians,—there is some truth
in this assertion, though we presume not to
deny their possession of ill-regulated power ;
—and idolized Pope as the first of English
poets. Among modern writers, Scott was his
favourite. In this opinion his Lordship is
evidently sineere, for we find him quoting him
on all occasions, as if our Scottish Shakspeare
were always uppermost in his thoughts. Of
Washington Irving, he says, " his works are
my delight ;" of Keates, " his Hyperion is a
fine monument ;" of Barry Cornwall, " his dra-
matic scenes possess fancy and feeling, though
the lad has studied in a bad school ;" of Leigh
Hunt, he is a man of integrity—of talent--but
with no more knowledge of the world than a
child ; of Rogers, he is the most faultless of
living poets; of Crabbe he is a writer of strong
masculine ability ; of Shelley, he is a man of
first-rate intellect, whether as a poet—scholar—or
metaphysician. But the Lake, and above all,
the Cockney schools, were his Lordship's aver-
sion. He would not hear them mentioned.
They were synonimous with absurdity, preten-
sion, and impudence.
We return to Lord Byron's letters. These
show him to have been the child of impulse on
small, though the man of decision on great,
occasions. The hero who volunteered his life
for Italy, and gave it to Greece, could not enter
a carriage or mount a horse without trembling,
The philosopher, who moralized in " Childe
Harold," was stung to the quick because his
bookseller had neglected to send him over some
Macassar oil for his hair; the decided critic on
the works of others, was distrustful and unde-
cided on his own ; the misanthropist, who scorned
the world, writhed under the sneers of the fool ;
the aristocrat by birth and prejudice spent his
life in advocating the cause of freedom and the
people ; the generous enthusiast, who gave
away thousands in charity, bought a saving box
Ito fill with pence ! Strange contradictions ! But