There is never a time when a mind at all appreciative of poetry, and unburthened of immediately oppressing cares, cannot seize upon some one of these styles, according to its passing humor, and enjoy it with infinite satisfaction, until its too unvaried strain becomes wearisome. How admired and popular, then, would be a poet, whose happy tone could blend these seemingly heterogeneous qualities in its _material_, and afford spicy food savory to every whim and phase of appetite! Such, in a great measure, is Horace, and hence, in a measure, his untiring popularity through all ages. Such was Shakspeare, who, though he did not possess the ultraism of Byron, was a thousand times more philosophical; and who, could he have exchanged conditions, accidental circumstances with Lord Byron, inherited his name and title, worn his garb of romance and his air of eccentricity among modern women who would but flatter it to a disease, had shone a luminous sun of poetry, whilst Byron but passed as a flashy meteor. Finally, such, too, was Byron, with this distinctive mark, that in him the _melange_ is more perceptible, continuous, never ceases; and hence, in a great measure, his popularity to the end of time. He was always thoughtful, observant, meditative, verbose, and often wrote great poems under the inspiration of the moment. He was equally at home in grave and gay, in lively and severe, in tender and morose, in grand, in trifling, in voluptuous. He stood equally at home in his listless boat upon the stilly lake naveled among the hills, soothed by the softer influences afloat on Nature’s bosom; and on the heaving deck amid torn ocean’s roar, loving the unearthly terrors. He stood equally at home amid the bowers of a sunny and sea-girt isle, his soul melting for the moment, into ecstasies of voluptuous love; and amid bare mountain pates and wintry pyramids of snow, amid rugged rocks, and clefts, and crags, that rend the mighty thunder as it speeds; communing, with blanched face and swelling mind, with the angry spirits of Storm and Solitude. He was equally at home when, dejected and melancholy, he “poured through the mellow horn his plaintive soul,” and sighed and mourned in loneliness, making maidens weep; and when, fired by the poisoned cup and “_carnal companie_,” he reveled in profanity, and, to hear his ribald jests, made maidens blush. So far, indeed, would his nature bear contrast, that, he would have been equally at home when, wasted by the heat of an Asiatic sun and withering Siroc, he might repose in coolness beneath the broken arch and temple, conjuring up grim shadows of old armies past away, contrasting the proud glory of learned and heroic Greece with the shame of the cowardly vassals whose careless song is e’en now beguiling his ear with its lightness; when he might wander without a care or elevating thought amid the cinnamon groves of the Cingalese, embodying all thought in beautiful, redolent materiality, scenting even an immortal Paradise