and from the shoulder. Knowledge of life and study of Nature were the
mainsprings of a growth which the indirect influence of Wordsworth, and
the happy companionship of Shelley, played their part in fostering.
Faultlessness is seldom a characteristic of impetuous verse, never of
Byron's; and even in the later parts of the _Childe_ there are careless
lines, and doubtful images. "Self-exiled Harold wanders forth again,"
looking "pale and interesting;" but we are soon refreshed by a higher
note. No familiarity can distract from "Waterloo," which holds its own by
Barbour's "Bannockburn," and Scott's "Flodden." Sir Walter, referring to
the climax of the opening, and the pathetic lament of the closing lines,
generously doubts whether any verses in English surpass them in vigour.
There follows "The Broken Mirror," extolled by Jeffrey with an
appreciation of its exuberance of fancy, and negligence of diction; and
then the masterly sketch of Napoleon, with the implied reference to the
writer at the end.

The descriptions in both cantos perpetually rise from a basis of rhetoric
to a real height of poetry. Byron's "Rhine" flows, like the river itself,
in a stream of "exulting and abounding" stanzas. His "Venice" may be set
beside the masterpieces of Ruskin's prose. They are together the joint
pride of Italy and England. The tempest in the third canto is in verse a
splendid microcosm of the favourites, if not the prevailing mood, of the
writer's mind. In spite of manifest flaws, the nine stanzas beginning "It
is the hush of night," have enough in them to feed a high reputation. The
poet's dying day, his sun and moon contending over the Rhaetian hill, his
Thrasymene, Clitumnus, and Velino, show that his eye has grown keener, and
his imagery at least more terse, and that he can occasionally forgot
himself in his surroundings. The Drachenfels, Ehrenbreitstein, the Alps,
Lake Leman, pass before us like a series of dissolving views. But the
stability of the book depends on its being a Temple of Fame, as well as a