Microsoft Word Byron and Scott 1809-1824

126: “Teian” is used by Byron at DJ III, The Isles of Greece, 2, 1. 
127: 1 Samuel 3:20, or 2 Samuel 3:10, 17:11, 24:2, 24:7, 24:15. 

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This fashion of thinking and writing of course had its imitators, and those right many. But the 
humorous sadness which sat so gracefully on the original made but a poor and awkward appearance on 
those who 
——— wrapp’d themselves in Harold’s inky cloak, 
To show the world how ‘Byron’ did not ‘write.’
128
Their affected melancholy shewed like the cynicism of Ape-[p.219]-mantus contrasted with the 
real misanthropy of Timon. And, to say the truth, we are not sorry that the fashion has latterly lost 
ground. This species of general contempt of intellectual pleasures, and worldly employment, is more 
closely connected with the Epicurean philosophy than may be at first supposed. If philosophy be but a 
pursuit of words, and the revolutions of empires inevitable returns of the same cycle of fearful 
transitions; if our earliest and best affections ‘run to waste, and water but the desert’,
129
the want of 
worthier motives to action gives a tremendous and destructive impulse to the dangerous Carpe diem of 
the Garden—that most seductive argument of sensual pleasure. This doctrine of the nothingness of 
human pursuits, not as contrasted with those of religion and virtue, (to which they are indeed as 
nothing,) but absolutely and in themselves, is too apt to send its pupils in despair to those pleasures 
which promise a real gratification, however short and gross. Thus do thoughts and opinions, in 
themselves the most melancholy, become incitements to the pursuit of the most degrading pleasures; as 
the Egyptians placed skulls upon their banqueting tables, and as the fools of Holy Writ made the daring 
and fearful association of imminent fate and present revelling—Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we 
die....
130
 
If we treat the humour less gravely, and consider it as a posture of the mind assumed for the nonce, 
still this enumeration of the vain pursuits, the indulged yet unsatiated passions of humanity, is apt to 
weary our spirits if not our patience, and the discourse terminates in a manner as edifying as the 
dialogue in Prior’s Alma:— 
‘“Tired with these thoughts”—“Less tired than I, 
Quoth Dick, “with your philosophy— 
That people live and die I knew, 
An hour ago as well as you; 
What need of books these truths to tell, 
Which folks perceive who cannot spell; 
And must we spectacles apply, 
To view what hurts our naked eye? 
If to be sad is to be wise, 
I do most heartily despise 
Whatever Socrates has said, 
Or Tully wrote, or Wanley read.” 
Dear Drift! to set our matters right, 
Remove these papers from my sight, 
Burn Mat’s Des-carte and Aristotle— 
Here, Jonathan, your master’s bottle.’
131
But it was not merely to the novelty of an author speaking in his own person, and in a tone which 
arrogated a contempt of all the ordinary pursuits of life, that Childe Harold owed its extensive 
popularity: these formed but the point or sharp edge of the wedge [p.220] by which the work was 
enabled to insinuate its way into that venerable block, the British public. The high claims inferred at 
once in the direct appeal to general attention, and scorn of general feeling, were supported by powers 
equal to such pretensions. He who despised the world intimated that he had the talents and genius 
necessary to win it if he had thought it worth while. There was a strain of poetry in which the sense 
predominated over the sound; there was the eye keen to behold nature, and the pen powerful to trace 
her varied graces of beauty or terror; there was the heart ardent at the call of freedom or of generous 
feeling, and belying every moment the frozen shrine in which false philosophy had incased it, glowing 
like the intense and concentrated alcohol, which remains one single but burning drop in the centre of 
the ice which its more watery particles have formed.
132
In despite of the character which he had