which displayed most the power of his mind--which claims for him the
greatest praise--his _Essay on Man_, &c. appeared after his fortieth
year. _Windsor Forest_ was published in his twenty-second or
twenty-third year, both were the labour of some _years_; and the
immortal Milton, who published some few things before his thirtieth
year, sent not his great work, _Paradise Lost_, to the world until he
verged on sixty.

With the poets, and the knowledge of what Byron _was_, we may ask what
he would have been had it pleased the Great Author of all things to
suffer the summer of his consummate mental powers to shine upon us? Take
the works of any of the abovenamed distinguished individuals previous to
their thirty-eighth year, and shall we perceive that flexibility of the
English language to the extent that Byron has left behind him? His
versatility was, indeed, astonishing and triumphant. His _Childe
Harold_, the _Bride of Abydos_, the _Corsair_, and _Don Juan_, (though
somewhat too freely written,) are established proofs of his unequalled
energy of mind. His power was unlimited; not only eloquent, but the
sublime, grave and gay, were all equally familiar to his muse.

Few words are wanted to show that Byron was not depraved at heart; no
man possessed a more ready sympathy, a more generous mind to the
distressed, or was a more enthusiastic admirer of noble actions. These
feelings all strongly delineated in his character, would never admit, as
Sir Walter Scott has observed, "an imperfect moral sense, nor feeling,
dead to virtue." Severe as the

"Combined usurpers on the throne of taste"

have been, his character is marked by some of the best principles in