The third Canto of “Childe Harold,” “Manfred,” and dozens of shorter poems had been sent to Murray.  England read and paid for all that Byron wrote, and accepted it all as autobiography.  Possibly Byron’s defiant manner lent an excuse for this, but by applying similar rules we could convict Sophocles, Schiller and Shelley of basest crimes, put Shakespeare in the dock for murder, Milton for blasphemy, Scott for forgery, and Goethe for questionable financial deals with the devil.  Byron’s sins were as scarlet and the number not a few, but the moths that came just to flit about the flame were all of mature age.  Byron set no snares for the innocent, and in all of the man’s misdoings, he himself it was who suffered most.

The Countess Guiccioli, it seems, was the only woman who comprehended his nature sufficiently to lead him in the direction of peace and poise.  With her, for the first time, he began to systematize his life on a basis of sanity.  They lived together for five years, and from the time he met her until his death no other love came to separate them.

Throughout his life Byron was a man in revolt; and it was only a variation of the old passion for freedom that led him to Greece and to his grave.  The personal bravery of the man was proven more than once in his life, and on the approach of death he was undismayed.  When he passed away, April Nineteenth, Eighteen Hundred Twenty-four, Stanhope wrote, “England has lost her brightest genius—­Greece her best friend.”

His body was returned to England, denied burial in Westminster, and now rests in the old church at Hucknall, near Newstead.

JOSEPH ADDISON

    Thus am I doubly armed:  my death and life,
    My bane and antidote, are both before me. 
    This in a moment brings me to an end;
    But this informs me I shall never die. 
    The soul, secured in her existence, smiles
    At the drawn dagger, and defies its point. 
    The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
    Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years;
    But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
    Unhurt amid the war of elements,
    The wreck of matter, and the crash of worlds!
                                       —­Cato’s Soliloquy

[Illustration:  Joseph Addison]

Men are not punished for their sins, but by them.

Expression is necessary to life.  The spirit grows through exercise of its faculties, just as a muscle grows strong through use.  Life is expression and repression is stagnation—­death.

Yet there is right expression and wrong expression.  If a man allows his life to run riot, and only the animal side of his nature is allowed to express itself, he is repressing his highest and best, and therefore those qualities, not used, atrophy and die.

Sensuality, gluttony and the life of license repress the life of the spirit, and the soul never blossoms; and this is what it is to lose one’s soul.  All adown the centuries thinking men have noted these truths, and again and again we find individuals forsaking, in horror, the life of the senses and devoting themselves to the life of the spirit.