if the one defers too much to the spirit of antiquity, the other panders to the spirit of the age, goes to the very edge of extreme and licentious speculation, and breaks his neck over it.  Grossness and levity are the playthings of his pen.  It is a ludicrous circumstance that he should have dedicated his Cain to the worthy Baronet!  Did the latter ever acknowledge the obligation?  We are not nice, not very nice; but we do not particularly approve those subjects that shine chiefly from their rottenness:  nor do we wish to see the Muses drest out in the flounces of a false or questionable philosophy, like Portia and Nerissa in the garb of Doctors of Law.  We like metaphysics as well as Lord Byron; but not to see them making flowery speeches, nor dancing a measure in the fetters of verse.  We have as good as hinted, that his Lordship’s poetry consists mostly of a tissue of superb common-places; even his paradoxes are common-place.  They are familiar in the schools:  they are only new and striking in his dramas and stanzas, by being out of place.  In a word, we think that poetry moves best within the circle of nature and received opinion:  speculative theory and subtle casuistry are forbidden ground to it.  But Lord Byron often wanders into this ground wantonly, wilfully, and unwarrantably.  The only apology we can conceive for the spirit of some of Lord Byron’s writings, is the spirit of some of those opposed to him.  They would provoke a man to write any thing.  “Farthest from them is best.”  The extravagance and license of the one seems a proper antidote to the bigotry and narrowness of the other.  The first Vision of Judgment was a set-off to the second, though

  “None but itself could be its parallel.”

Perhaps the chief cause of most of Lord Byron’s errors is, that he is that anomaly in letters and in society, a Noble Poet.  It is a double privilege, almost too much for humanity.  He has all the pride of birth and genius.  The strength of his imagination leads him to indulge in fantastic opinions; the elevation of his rank sets censure at defiance.  He becomes a pampered egotist.  He has a seat in the House of Lords, a niche in the Temple of Fame.  Every-day mortals, opinions, things are not good enough for him to touch or think of.  A mere nobleman is, in his estimation, but “the tenth transmitter of a foolish face:”  a mere man of genius is no better than a worm.  His Muse is also a lady of quality.  The people are not polite enough for him:  the Court not sufficiently intellectual.  He hates the one and despises the other.  By hating and despising others, he does not learn to be satisfied with himself.  A fastidious man soon grows querulous and splenetic.  If there is nobody but ourselves to come up to our idea of fancied perfection, we easily get tired of our idol.  When a man is tired of what he is, by a natural perversity he sets up for what he is not.  If he is a poet, he pretends