the ingenious and elaborate apologies which have been offered for his

aberrations, and the specious glosses over his sentiments. The method generally adopted by his friends, to screen the advocate of error and licentiousness

which have been drawn

from the punishment which he had justly merited, has been to present to the world the most highlywrought picture of his misfortunes and sufferings, and thus gain the possession of our hearts in his favour by the deepest and most intense sympathy. His sufferings have been

represented either as the mysterious visitations of Providence, or as the unmerited inflictions of those with whom he has been connected in life; and these, in all their intensity, have been offered as an atonement, or rather as a justification of the poet's career. They have adopted his own pathetic, but falsely sentimental language

That what to them seemed vice might but be woe.
Hard is his fate on whom the public gaze,
Is fixed for ever, to detract or praise."*

Monody on the death of Sheridan.

The writers who have dared to tear aside the flimsy veil thus thrown over the seductive and deadly polluting writings of the Bard, have been branded to the world as every thing mean and contemptible. Again, and again, has it been said, that the author is to be separated from the man, and that these intrusions, as they have been called, into his private and domestic character, are only to be tolerated by the scandalloving part of mankind. This would be well enough were it true. But, alas! the want of this requisite is

fatal to the argument. Who was it that blazoned abroad his private and domestic vices and calamities?-who invited the gaze of the thoughtless and the giddy, to scenes around which an impenetrable veil should have been drawn?-it was the poet, -it was Byron! His poetical career was commenced and terminated with the most apparent anxiety to invite the attention of the world to the vices and misfortunes of the author. Who then is to blame?-Let the accusation recoil upon its authors! Then, as to the caveat which these

gentlemen put in, against identifying the man with his writings, we say that from the circumstance just alluded to, this was impossible in the case of Byron. To the most careless reader of his productions, it must be apparent, that his great and growing anxiety was to cause the perception of such an identity, and it is well known to those who have been the most intimate with him, that his gratification was in proportion as this object was accomplished. If Lord Byron has made his writings