Concerning Byron’s character as a man, little need be said to prove its double littleness. From every man, no matter how low his capacity, something good, something useful is expected; and he who meets not this natural, this rational expectation, merits the stigma of littleness of character. To some men are given high conceptions, deep penetration, exalted feelings and impulses, and energy of mind: yet, if they meet not the rational expectation of greater good, greater utility than is the average offspring of lowlier men, they merit the stigma of littleness of character; and if they produce no good at all, they are doubly little. If not only this, but they positively pervert those gifts to the detriment of others, they are trebly little. Nay, more—a man’s littleness, if he pervert his gifts, does not increase in direct ratio with his relative capacities; but I feel that I am justified in applying here the mathematical law of gravitation, and in saying that his littleness—measured on God’s measure of mankind—increases as the square of his distance above the average capacity of his race. How much, then, must the greatest admirers of Lord Byron; those who seem struck with awe before the mountain of his stupendous power, despise, in their inmost heart, his utter, utter littleness! Truly may we comprise him in the Latin poet’s pithy words—“_Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus._”
No man is great who has not the strength of mind to work utility from vast resources, and is able, besides, to appreciate the necessity of working that utility, in spite of whim, humor, flattery, success or misfortune: yet not one sentiment, of benefit to mankind or individual, amongst those now ministering upon this earth of trial, of suffering, and of temptation, can claim paternity in Lord Byron. As his poetry is a poetry of passion unregulated by principle, so was the life of his feelings and his intellect, a life of unbridled license. Let no one put forth, in extenuation, that he often meant well; and that his venom, when he spat it, was the secretion of unhappiness and misfortune; for we have no proof, no reason to believe that he ever meant well, but his own assertion—which is singular when contrasted with his life and his writings; and as to his sufferings, he courted, nursed suffering as the theme of all his writings. How strangely does the assertion of his moral intent, in his farewell to the “Childe,” contrast with the confession of the truth which a moment of intoxication beguiled from him in the II. Canto of Don Juan! In the one we read—