spring only from the reckless buoyancy of young blood and fiery passions; for impiety there might at least be pity, were it visible that the misery of the impious soul equalled its darkness:  but for offences such as this, which cannot proceed either from the madness of sudden impulse or the bewildered agonies of doubt, but which speak the wilful and determined spite of an unrepenting, unsoftened, smiling, sarcastic, joyous sinner, there can be neither pity nor pardon.  Our knowledge that it is committed by one of the most powerful intellects our island ever has produced lends intensity a thousand-fold to the bitterness of our indignation.  Every high thought that was ever kindled in our breasts by the Muse of Byron, every pure and lofty feeling that ever responded from within us to the sweep of his majestic inspirations, every remembered moment of admiration and enthusiasm, is up in arms against him.  We look back with a mixture of wrath and scorn to the delight with which we suffered ourselves to be filled by one, who, all the while he was furnishing us with delight, must, we cannot doubt it, have been mocking us with a cruel mockery; less cruel only, because less peculiar, than that with which he has now turned him from the lurking-place of his selfish and polluted exile to pour the pitiful chalice of his contumely on the surrendered devotion of a virgin bosom, and the holy hopes of the mother of his child.  It is indeed a sad and a humiliating thing to know, that in the same year, there proceeded from the same pen two productions in all things so different as the fourth canto of “Childe Harold” and his loathsome “Don Juan.”

’We have mentioned one, and, all will admit, the worst instance of the private malignity which has been embodied in so many passages of “Don Juan;” and we are quite sure the lofty-minded and virtuous men whom Lord Byron has debased himself by insulting will close the volume which contains their own injuries, with no feelings save those of pity for him that has inflicted them, and for her who partakes so largely in the same injuries.’—­August, 1819.

* * * * *

’BLACKWOOD,’—­iterum.

’We shall, like all others who say anything about Lord Byron, begin, sans apologie, with his personal character.  This is the great object of attack, the constant theme of open vituperation to one set, and the established mark for all the petty but deadly artillery of sneers, shrugs, groans, to another.  Two widely different matters, however, are generally, we might say universally, mixed up here,—­the personal character of the man, as proved by his course of life; and his personal character, as revealed in or guessed from his books.  Nothing can be more unfair than the style in which this mixture is made use of.  Is there a noble sentiment, a lofty thought, a sublime conception, in the book?  “Ah, yes!” is the answer.  “But what of that?  It is only the roue Byron that speaks!” Is a kind, a generous action of the man mentioned?  “Yes, yes!” comments the sage; “but only remember the atrocities of ‘Don Juan:’  depend on it, this, if it be true, must have been a mere freak of caprice, or perhaps a bit of vile hypocrisy.”  Salvation is thus shut out at either entrance:  the poet damns the man, and the man the poet.