Microsoft Word Byron and Scott 1809-1824

52: Lara, ll.12-13. 
53: Scott alludes to Henry Brougham’s Edinburgh Review critique of Hours of Idleness. 
54: EBSR. 
55: B. returned in 1811; it was in 1812 that Scott and B. first communicated. 

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them. Yet the very audacity of this repulsive personification, joined to the energy with which it was 
supported, and to the indications of a bold, powerful, and original mind which glanced through every 
line of the poem, electrified the mass of readers, and placed at once upon Lord Byron’s head the 
garland for which other men of genius have toiled long, and which they have gained late. He was 
placed pre-eminent among the literary men of his country by general acclamation. Those who had so 
rigorously censured his juvenile essays, and perhaps ‘dreaded such another field,’
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were the first to 
pay warm and, we believe, sincere homage to his natural efforts; while others, [p.176] who saw in the 
sentiments of Childe Harold much to regret and to censure, did not withhold their tribute of applause to 
the depth of thought, the power and force of expression, the beauty of description, and the energy of 
sentiment which animated the ‘Pilgrimage’. If the volume was laid aside for a moment, under the 
melancholy and unpleasing impression that it seemed calculated to chase hope from the side of man, 
and to dim his prospects both of this life and of futurity, it was immediately and almost involuntarily 
assumed again, as our feeling of the author’s genius predominated over our dislike to contemplate the 
gloomy views of human nature which it was his pleasure to place before us. Something was set down 
to the angry recollection of his first failure, which might faintly authorize so high a mind to hold the 
world’s opinion in contempt; something was allowed for the recent family losses
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to which the poem 
alluded, and under the feeling of which it had been partly written:
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and it seemed to most readers as if 
gentler and more kindly features were, at times, seen to glance from under the cloud of misanthropy, 
which the author had flung around the hero. Thus, as all admired the Pilgrimage of Childe Harold, all 
were prepared to greet the author with that fame which is the poet’s best reward, and which is chiefly 
and most justly due to one who, in these exhausted days, strikes out a new and original line of 
composition. 
It was amidst such feelings of admiration that Lord Byron entered, we may say for the first time, 
the public stage on which he has, for four years, made so distinguished a figure. Every thing in his 
manner, person, and conversation, tended to maintain the charm which his genius had flung around 
him; and those admitted to his conversation,
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far from finding that the inspired poet sunk into ordinary 
mortality, felt themselves attached to him, not only by many noble qualities, but by the interest of a 
mysterious, undefined, and almost painful curiosity. 
It is well known how wide the doors of society are opened in London to literary merit even of a 
degree far inferior to Lord Byron’s, and that it is only necessary to be honourably distinguished by the 
public voice to move as a denizen in the first circles. This passport was not necessary to Lord Byron 
who possessed the hereditary claims of birth and rank. But the interest which his genius attached to his 
presence, and to his conversation, was of a nature far beyond what these hereditary claims could of 
themselves have conferred, and his reception was enthusiastic beyond any thing we have ever 
witnessed, or even heard reported. We have already noticed that Lord Byron is not one of those literary 
men of whom it may be truly said, Minuit præsentia famam.
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A countenance, exquisitely modeled to 
the expression of feeling and passion, [p.177] and exhibiting the remarkable contrast of very dark hair 
and eye-brows, with light and expressive eyes, presented to the physiognomist the most interesting 
subject for the exercise of the art. The predominating expression was that of deep and habitual thought, 
which gave way to the most rapid play of features when he engaged in interesting discussion; so that a 
brother poet
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compared them to the sculpture of a beautiful alabaster vase, only seen to perfection 
when lighted up from within. The flashes of mirth, gaiety, indignation, or satirical dislike which 
frequently animated Lord Byron’s countenance, might, during an evening’s conversation, be mistaken 
by a stranger, for the habitual expression, so easily and so happily was it formed for them all; but those 
who had an opportunity of studying his features for a length of time, and upon various occasions, both 
of rest and emotion, will agree with us that their proper language was that of melancholy. Sometimes 
shades of this gloom interrupted even his gayest and most happy moments, and the following verses are 
said to have dropped from his pen to excuse a transient expression of melancholy which overclouded 
the general gaiety. 
‘When from the heart where Sorrow sits, 
Her dusky shadow mounts too high, 
And o’er the changing aspects flits, 
And clouds the brow, or fills the eye—