Wishing Byron to appear as the type of energy, M. Taine exhibits him to our eyes in the light of Satan defying all powers on earth and in heaven. The better to mould him to the form he has chosen, he begins by disfiguring him in the arms of his mother, whom with his father and his family he scruples not to calumniate. Storms having their origin in the rupture of the elements, and a violent character being, according to M. Taine, the result of several forces acting internally and mechanically; it follows that its primary cause is to be found in the disturbed moral condition of those who have given birth to him in the circumstances under which the child was born, and in the influence under which he has been brought up. Hence the necessity of supplementing from imagination the historical and logical facts which otherwise might be at fault. As for Lord Byron's softness of manner, and as to that tenderness of character which was the bane of his existence,--as to his real and great goodness, which made him loved always and everywhere, and which caused such bitter tears to be shed at the news of his death,--these qualities are not to be sought in the strange, fanciful being who is styled Byron by M. Taine. These qualities would be out of place; they would be opposed to the idea upon which his entire system is founded. They must be merged in the energy and greatness of intellect of the poetical giant. Unfortunately for M. Taine, facts speak too forcibly and too inopportunely against him. Not one of the causes which he mentions, not one of the conclusions which he draws in respect to Lord Byron's character as a poet, and as a mere mortal, are to be relied upon. He, who contends that he possesses pre-eminently the power of comprehending the man and the author, insists that Lord Byron was no exception to the rule, though his best biographer, Moore, most distinctly opposes this opinion:-- "In Lord Byron, however, this sort of pivot of character was almost wholly wanting.... So various indeed, and contradictory, were his attributes, both moral and intellectual, that he may be pronounced to have been not one, but many; nor would it be any great exaggeration of the truth to say that out of the mere partition of the properties of his single mind a plurality of characters, all different and all vigorous, might have been furnished."