of his great friend's weaker work, and recoiled in alarm before the daring defiance of his stronger. His criticisms on all Byron wrote and felt seriously on religion are almost worthy of a conventicle. His letters to others on _Manfred_, and _Cain_, and _Don Juan_, are the expression of sentiments which he had never the courage to state explicitly to the author. On the other hand, Byron was attracted beyond reasonable measure by his gracefully deferential manners, paid too much regard to his opinions, and overestimated his genius. For the subsequent destruction of the memoirs, urged by Mr. Hobhouse and Mrs. Leigh, he was not wholly responsible; though a braver man, having accepted the position of his lordship's literary legatee, with the express understanding that he would seue to the fulfilment of the wishes of his dead friend, would have to the utmost resisted their total frustration. Meanwhile, on landing in England, the poet had placed in the hands of Mr. Dallas the _Hints from Horace_, which he intended to have brought out by the publisher Cawthorne. Of this performance--an inferior edition, relieved by a few strong touches, of the _Bards and Reviewers_--Dallas ventured to express his disapproval. "Have you no other result of your travels?" he asked; and got for answer, "A few short pieces; and a lot of Spenserian stanzas; not worth troubling you with, but you are welcome to them." Dallas took the remark literally, saw they were a safe success, and assumed to himself the merit of the discovery, the risks, and the profits. It is the converse of the story of Gabriel Harvey and the _Faery Queene_. Tho first two cantos of _Childe Harold_ bear no comparison with the legend of _Una and the Red Cross Knight_; but there was no mistake about their proof of power, their novelty, and adaptation to a public taste as yet unjaded by eloquent and imaginative descriptions of foreign scenery, manners, and climates.