It seemed rather to augment their claims, and the clear current from the fountain of the imagination is seen to flow right through the channel of the heart, sparkling with beauty and murmuring natural music in the enchanted ear. Even the voluptuous Moore is said to have repaired his fame and prolonged his days by settling down into the sobrieties of domestic life. To return to Byron. He might be said to be unfortunate in his cradle. His young days were brought under sinister influences and associations. The youth that is deprived of a healthy maternal guardianship, is to be pitied. Such was Byron’s lot. Alternately indulged and abused, petted and irritated, his temper was formed in a bad mould. Never could he forget the feeling of horror and humiliation that came over him when his mother, in one of her fits of passion, called him a “lame brat.” Now, as men of genius, being by a law of genius itself susceptible of strong impressions, are in the habit of reproducing those impressions in their works, a man of a sensitive poetic temperament, like Byron, and one so highly, so dangerously endowed with intellect, and a vigorous power of expression, would give to all these thoughts and associations a local habitation, a living permanence in poetry, romance, and even in history, so far as it could be turned to such a purpose. In his Deformed Transformed, Bertha says: “Out, hunchback!” Poor Arnold replies: “I was born so, mother!” If, then, we find the traits of misanthropy, scorn, hate, revenge, and others of the serpent brood, so often obtruding themselves in his poetry as to compel us to believe they were combined with the very texture of his thoughts and the action of his imagination, imparting to it a sombre and menacing aspect, we must refer much of this melancholy idiosyncracy to his early education. He was always grieving over the malformation of his foot. Far more lamentable was the malformation of his mental habits. But this, unlike the other, could be corrected. He should have exerted himself to achieve so noble a victory. Instead of this he resigned himself to the strength of the downward current, and was finally dashed among the rocks, where other stranded wrecks uttered their warning voice in vain. There did he take up the affecting lamentation: “The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree I planted—they have torn me, and I bleed. I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.”