" Byron's heroes all rebel against the
associative tendency of the nineteenth century; they are self-worshippers
at war with society; but most of them come to bad ends. He maligned
himself in those caricatures, and has given more of himself in describing
one whom with special significance we call a brother poet. "Allen," he
writes in 1813, "has lent me a quantity of Burns's unpublished letters....
What an antithetical mind!--tenderness, roughness--delicacy, coarseness--
sentiment, sensuality--soaring and grovelling--dirt and deity--all mixed
up in that one compound of inspired clay!" We have only to add to these
antitheses, in applying them with slight modification to the writer. Byron
had, on occasion, more self-control than Burns, who yielded to every
thirst or gust, and could never have lived the life of the soldier at
Mesolonghi; but partly owing to meanness, partly to a sound instinct, his
memory has been more severely dealt with. The fact of his being a nobleman
helped to make him famous, but it also helped to make him hated. No doubt
it half spoiled him in making him a show; and the circumstance has
suggested the remark of a humourist, that it is as hard for a lord to be a
perfect gentleman as for a camel to pass through the needle's eye.
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