passed into a stranger's hold,—the meteoric glory and total eclipse of his unparalleled popularity in England,—the follies, and worse than follies, which have made him what he is, "consistent in nothing but his passion and his pride." These memories, like poisonous exhalations, are banished from his mind, and leave a clear horizon for a while,—a fertile landscape peopled with great words and images. Something akin to inspiration seizes upon him: and he throws himself to work with all the zest and nerve of his impulsive nature.

This is a man who writes, in his own phrase, "with rapidity and rarely with pains…. When I once take pen in hand, I must say what comes uppermost or fling it away." Not for him that careful polishing of sentences, which other writers meticulously bestow. "I have always written as fast as I could put pen to paper, and never revised but in the proofs…. I can never recast anything. I am like the tiger; if I miss the first spring, I go grumbling back to my jungle." And to this impetuous directness of onslaught, his finest poems bear witness. Some critic has remarked that Byron is too much of the earth earthy to be a great lyrical writer: yet a Promethean fire, stolen from heaven, burns immortally through some of his shorter lyrics. In Greek, it is said, there are 1632 ways of expressing the simple fact I love you: yet who has ever put it in a more convincing form than Byron does in Maid of Athens?

Click to ENLARGE

Rapidly as his pen flies over the paper, the torrent of throbbing thought flows faster still. Far on into the night, when ghostly noises echo through the sleeping palace, "that ever-gushing and perennial fount of natural waters," as Scott has described the genius of Byron, pours forth in reckless profusion. Until at last, outspent with energy, he draws a deep breath of exhaustion, and realizes that he is weariness itself. The moon has sunk in Arno: the stars are half-way across the sky: a cold glimmer of dawn is palpitating along the East, as Byron—