way.  He hallows in order to desecrate; takes a pleasure in defacing the images of beauty his hands have wrought; and raises our hopes and our belief in goodness to Heaven only to dash them to the earth again, and break them in pieces the more effectually from the very height they have fallen.  Our enthusiasm for genius or virtue is thus turned into a jest by the very person who has kindled it, and who thus fatally quenches the sparks of both.  It is not that Lord Byron is sometimes serious and sometimes trifling, sometimes profligate, and sometimes moral—­but when he is most serious and most moral, he is only preparing to mortify the unsuspecting reader by putting a pitiful hoax upon him.  This is a most unaccountable anomaly.  It is as if the eagle were to build its eyry in a common sewer, or the owl were seen soaring to the mid-day sun.  Such a sight might make one laugh, but one would not wish or expect it to occur more than once![C]

In fact, Lord Byron is the spoiled child of fame as well as fortune.  He has taken a surfeit of popularity, and is not contented to delight, unless he can shock the public.  He would force them to admire in spite of decency and common sense—­he would have them read what they would read in no one but himself, or he would not give a rush for their applause.  He is to be “a chartered libertine,” from whom insults are favours, whose contempt is to be a new incentive to admiration.  His Lordship is hard to please:  he is equally averse to notice or neglect, enraged at censure and scorning praise.  He tries the patience of the town to the very utmost, and when they shew signs of weariness or disgust, threatens to discard them.  He says he will write on, whether he is read or not.  He would never write another page, if it were not to court popular applause, or to affect a superiority over it.  In this respect also, Lord Byron presents a striking contrast to Sir Walter Scott.  The latter takes what part of the public favour falls to his share, without grumbling (to be sure he has no reason to complain) the former is always quarrelling with the world about his modicum of applause, the spolia opima of vanity, and ungraciously throwing the offerings of incense heaped on his shrine back in the faces of his admirers.  Again, there is no taint in the writings of the Author of Waverley, all is fair and natural and above-board: he never outrages the public mind.  He introduces no anomalous character:  broaches no staggering opinion.  If he goes back to old prejudices and superstitions as a relief to the modern reader, while Lord Byron floats on swelling paradoxes—­

  “Like proud seas under him;”