[Footnote 1:  It may be making too light of criticism to say with Gray that “even a bad verse is as good a thing or better than the best observation that ever was made upon it;” but there are surely few tasks that appear more thankless and superfluous than that of following, as Criticism sometimes does, in the rear of victorious genius (like the commentators on a field of Blenheim or of Waterloo), and either labouring to point out to us why it has triumphed, or still more unprofitably contending that it ought to have failed.  The well-known passage of La Bruyere, which even Voltaire’s adulatory application of it to some work of the King of Prussia has not spoiled for use, puts, perhaps, in its true point of view the very subordinate rank which Criticism must be content to occupy in the train of successful Genius:—­“Quand une lecture vous eleve l’esprit et qu’elle vous inspire des sentimens nobles, ne cherehez pas une autre regle pour juger de l’ouvrage; il est bon et fait de main de l’ouvrier:  La Critique, apres ca, peut s’exercer sur les petites choses, relever quelques expressions, corriger des phrases, parler de syntaxe,” &c. &c.]

Having devoted to this object so large a portion of my own share of these pages, and, yet more fairly, enabled the world to form a judgment for itself, by placing the man, in his own person, and without disguise, before all eyes, there would seem to remain now but an easy duty in summing up the various points of his character, and, out of the features, already separately described, combining one complete portrait.  The task, however, is by no means so easy as it may appear.  There are few characters in which a near acquaintance does not enable us to discover some one leading principle or passion consistent enough in its operations to be taken confidently into account in any estimate of the disposition in which they are found.  Like those points in the human face, or figure, to which all its other proportions are referable, there is in most minds some one governing influence, from which chiefly,—­though, of course, biassed on some occasions by others,—­all its various impulses and tendencies will be found to radiate.  In Lord Byron, however, this sort of pivot of character was almost wholly wanting.  Governed as he was at different moments by totally different passions, and impelled sometimes, as during his short access of parsimony in Italy, by springs of action never before developed in his nature, in him this simple mode of tracing character to its sources must be often wholly at fault; and if, as is not impossible, in trying to solve the strange variances of his mind, I should myself be found to have fallen into contradictions and inconsistencies, the extreme difficulty of analysing, without dazzle or bewilderment, such an unexampled complication of qualities must be admitted as my excuse.