When, in addition,
too, to these traits of early character, we find scattered through
his youthful poems such anticipations of the glory that awaited
him,--such, alternately, proud and saddened glimpses into the future,
as if he already felt the elements of something great within him, but
doubted whether his destiny would allow him to bring it forth,--it is
not wonderful that, with the whole of his career present to our
imaginations, we should see a lustre round these first puerile
attempts not really their own, but shed back upon them from the bright
eminence which he afterwards attained; and that, in our indignation
against the fastidious blindness of the critic, we should forget that
he had not then the aid of this reflected charm, with which the
subsequent achievements of the poet now irradiate all that bears his
name.
The effect this criticism produced upon him can only be conceived by
those who, besides having an adequate notion of what most poets would
feel under such an attack, can understand all that there was in the
temper and disposition of Lord Byron to make him feel it with tenfold
more acuteness than others. We have seen with what feverish anxiety he
awaited the verdicts of all the minor Reviews, and, from his
sensibility to the praise of the meanest of these censors, may guess
how painfully he must have writhed under the sneers of the highest. A
friend, who found him in the first moments of excitement after reading
the article, enquired anxiously whether he had just received a
challenge?--not knowing how else to account for the fierce defiance of
his looks.
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