Lord Byron’s poetry is entirely a poetry of sentiment: there is no philosophy in it. After all, a man’s best study of the more intimate workings of the human heart, must find its materials within himself; and his productions will be moulded and colored by his principles; for it is they that supply the oil which feeds the habitual light in the chamber of the mind. When there exists no fixed principle, there exists no fixed light, no steady medium, no standard measure, then all is moral darkness, and vagaries, and dreamy riot. Now and then, it is true, solid thoughts and good may spring up from the mind’s fertility, but if they be not pretty, they are cast aside, and if they be pretty, they are doomed to association with ignobler ones, to be ranged indiscriminately with pretty thoughts and profane, upon the shelves of poetry. There is nothing in Byron’s poetry that can inspire any good. It is true there are good and noble sentiments woven in the mass; but it is so plain that only their beauty is turned toward us, to the entire neglect of intrinsic worth, that one cannot help associating them with the man, and they fade into vagaries. There are poets who, with vigorous and accustomed flight, transport us into more lofty realms of thought than Byron’s gaudy wing would dare aspire to lift us to. Such are Milton, and Dante, and Klopstock; men, before whose towering intellects Byron, like us, bowed down in astonishment and veneration. There are those, too, who have swept their harps to lays of richer melody; such is he, as we have just learned, the thrilling music of whose harp is o’er, for the hand that waked it moulders in the grave. Alas! Tom Moore, the glow of Oriental fire is extinguished forever in Britain; but thy memory shall endure, green as the green and lonely isle that gave thee birth; and the melting warmth of thy mellow melodies shall not grow cold forever! Such was Dryden, too, who, softly sweet in Lydian measures, could lull and soothe our soul to pleasures. Such at times was Collins; such was preëminently Petrarch; such, too, was the rollicking old Anacreon in his time. There are poets, too, who, with hard and honest hand, could lead us more at ease through the peasant’s humble door, and open to us freely there the gushing fount of simple love, and sincere and innocent and homely pleasure, and the sweet joys of peaceful rest. Such could Burns, and such could Florian. There are poets who, with measured tread, could lead us a more majestic walk upon classic terraces, and withdraw us further from the commonalities of life. Such is Homer, and Virgil, and Tasso, and Pope. There are poets of wiser and more practical philosophy, who could feel and appreciate the poetry of wisdom; like Schiller: and there are poets, too, like Ariosto, who could glide and curvet about his pen, performing strange feats of ideal legerdemain in a perfect gymnasium of poetry, from whom Byron, like almost all others, must turn away in helpless laughter.