Doubtless there was a remedy for this perverseness, but not in others--only in himself; least of all in simple increase of wealth and worldly "respectability." We hope we have now heard enough about the efficacy of wealth for poetry and to make poets happy. Nay, have we not seen another instance of it in these very days? Byron, a man of an endowment considerably less ethereal than that of Burns, is born in the rank not of a Scottish ploughman, but of an English peer: the highest worldly honors, the fairest worldly career, are his by inheritance: the richest harvest of fame he soon reaps, in another province, by his own hand. And what does all this avail him? Is he happy, is he good, is he true? Alas, he has a poet's soul, and strives toward the infinite and the eternal; and soon feels that all this is but mounting to the housetop to reach the stars! Like Burns, he is only a proud man; might, like him, have "purchased a pocket-copy of Milton to study the character of Satan"; for Satan also is Byron's grand exemplar, the hero of his poetry, and the model apparently of his conduct. As in Burns's case, too, the celestial element will not mingle with the clay of earth; both poet and man of the world he must not be; vulgar ambition will not live kindly with poetic adoration; he _cannot_ serve God and Mammon. Byron, like Burns, is not happy; nay, he is the most wretched of all men. His life is falsely arranged: the fire that is in him is not a strong, still, central fire, warming into beauty the products of a world, but it is the mad fire of a volcano; and now--we look sadly into the ashes of a crater, which, erelong, will fill itself with snow! FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 46: From the "History of the French Revolution."] [Footnote 47: Jean Paul Marat, a physician, was the most radical of the Jacobins and had been a leader in the overthrow of the Girondists on June 2, 1793. He was assassinated by Charlotte Corday on July 18 of the same year.] [Footnote 48: From "Past and Present."] [Footnote 49: From "Heroes and Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History."] [Footnote 50: From "Sartor Resartus."] [Footnote 51: From "Past and Present."] [Footnote 52: From the essay on Lockhart's "Life of Scott," contributed to the _London and Westminster Review_ in 1838.] [Footnote 53: A reference apparently to Carlo Broschi, an Italian soprano, whom Grove's "Dictionary" describes as "the most remarkable singer perhaps who has ever lived." He was born in 1705 and died in 1782.] [Footnote 54: From the essay on Croker's edition of Boswell's "Life of Johnson," contributed to _Frazer's Magazine_ in 1832.] [Footnote 55: From the essay on Burns contributed to the _Edinburgh Review_ in 1828.] LORD MACAULAY