Wordsworth's beautiful, simple ballad of "We are seven" I have seen hawked about for a penny, and Tannahill's song of "Jessy" has met with more popularity among the common people than all other songs, English and Scottish, put together. Lord Byron's hasty fame may be deemed a contradiction to the above opinion that popularity is not true fame, though at its greatest extent it is but an exception, and scarcely that, for his great and hurried popularity, that almost trampled on its own heels in its haste, must drop into a less bustling degree, and become cool and quiet, like the preaching of Irving. Shakespeare was hardly noticed in his lifetime by popularity, but he is known now, and Byron is hardly the tenth part of a Shakespeare. Every storm must have its calm, and Byron took fame by storm. By a desperate daring he over-swept petty control like a rebellious flood, or a tempest worked up into madness by the quarrel of the elements, and he seemed to value that daring as the attainment of true fame. He looked upon Horace's "Art of Poetry" no doubt with esteem as a reader, but he cared no more for it in the profession of a poet than the weather does for an almanack. He looked upon critics as the countryman does on a magistrate. He beheld them as a race of petty tyrants that stood in the way of genius. They were in his eyes more of stumbling-blocks than guides, and he treated them accordingly. He let them know there was another road to Parnassus without taking theirs, and being obliged to do them homage. Not stooping to the impediments of their authorities, like the paths of a besieged city encumbered with sentinels, he made a road for himself, and, like Napoleon crossing the Alps, he let the world see that even in the eye of a mortal their greatest obstacles were looked on "as the dust in a balance." He gained the envied eminence of living popularity by making a breach where it was thought impregnable. Where others had laid siege for a lifetime, and lost their hopes and their labour at last, he gained the heights of popularity by a single stride, and looked down as a free-booter on the world below, scorning the applause his labours had gained him, and scarcely returning a compliment for the laurels which fashion so eagerly bound round his brows, while he saw the alarm of his leaden-footed enemies, and withered them to nothings with his sneer. He was an Oliver Cromwell with the critics. He broke up their long-standing Parliament and placed his own will in the Speaker's chair, and his will they humbly accepted. They submitted to one that scorned to be shackled, and champed the bit in his stead. They praised and respected him, nay, they worshipped him. He was all in all in their mouths and in their writings, but I suspect their hearts had as much love for him as the peasantry had for witches in the last century, who spoke well of them to their faces because they dared not do other-wise for fear of meeting an injury.