But it
also exposed to the rancours of jealousy a man who had nearly everything
but domestic happiness to excite that most corroding of literary passions;
and when he got out of gear he became the quarry of Spenser's "blatant
beast." On the other hand, Burns was, beneath his disgust at Holy Fairs
and Willies, sincerely reverential; much of _Don Juan_ would have seemed
to him "an atheist's laugh," and--a more certain superiority--he was
absolutely frank.
Byron, like Pope, was given to playing monkey-like tricks, mostly
harmless, but offensive to their victims. His peace of mind was dependent
on what people would say of him, to a degree unusual even in the irritable
race; and when they spoke ill he was, again like Pope, essentially
vindictive. The _Bards and Reviewers_ beats about, where the lines to
Atticus transfix with Philoctetes' arrows; but they are due to a like
impulse. Byron affected to contemn the world; but, say what he would, he
cared too much for it. He had a genuine love of solitude as an alterative;
but he could not subsist without society, and, Shelley tells us, wherever
he went, became the nucleus of it.
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