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MOORE'S LIFE OF BYRON, VOL. II.

The publication of this work, _bonâ fide_, has not yet taken place;
but we are enabled by the aid of the _Athenæum_ to quote a page.

The volume commences with the following powerful review of Lord
Byron's mind and fortune at the time he left England:--

"The circumstances under which Lord Byron now took leave of
England were such as, in the case of any ordinary person,
could not be considered otherwise than disastrous and
humiliating. He had, in the course of one short year, gone
through every variety of domestic misery;--had seen his hearth
ten times profaned by the visitations of the law, and been
only saved from a prison by the privileges of his rank. He had
alienated (if, indeed, they had ever been his) the affections
of his wife; and now, rejected by her, and condemned by the
world, was betaking himself to an exile which had not even the
dignity of appearing voluntary, as the excommunicating voice
of society seemed to leave him no other resource. Had he been
of that class of unfeeling and self-satisfied natures from
whose hard surface the reproaches of others fall pointless, he
might have found in insensibility a sure refuge against
reproach; but, on the contrary, the same sensitiveness that
kept him so awake to the applauses of mankind rendered him, in