He sprang up again when flung to the
earth, but he never attained to the disdain he desired.
We find him at once munificent and careful about money; calmly asleep amid
a crowd of trembling sailors, yet never going to ride without a nervous
caution; defying augury, yet seriously disturbed by a gipsy's prattle. He
could be the most genial of comrades, the most considerate of masters, and
he secured the devotion of his servants, as of his friends; but he was too
overbearing to form many equal friendships, and apt to be ungenerous to
his real rivals. His shifting attitude towards Lady Byron, his wavering
purposes, his impulsive acts, are a part of the character we trace through
all his life and work,--a strange mixture of magnanimity and brutality, of
laughter and tears, consistent in nothing but his passion and his pride,
yet redeeming all his defects by his graces, and wearing a greatness that
his errors can only half obscure.
Alternately the idol and the horror of his contemporaries, Byron was,
during his life, feared and respected as "the grand Napoleon of the realms
of rhyme." His works were the events of the literary world.
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