His short life had been, like his poetry, a sort of bright,
erroneous dream,--false in the general principles on which it proceeded,
though beautiful and attaching in most of the details. Had full time been
allowed for the "over-light" of his imagination to have been tempered down
by the judgment which, in him, was still in reserve, the world at large
would have been taught to pay that high homage to his genius which those
only who saw what he was capable of can now be expected to accord to it.
It was about this time that Mr. Cowell, paying a visit to Lord Byron at
Genoa, was told by him that some friends of Mr. Shelley, sitting together
one evening, had seen that gentleman, distinctly, as they thought, walk,
into a little wood at Lerici, when at the same moment, as they afterwards
discovered, he was far away, in quite a different direction. "This," added
Lord Byron, in a low, awe-struck tone of voice, "was but ten days before
poor Shelley died."
HIS SERVICE IN THE GREEK CAUSE.
With that thanklessness which too often waits on disinterested actions, it
has been some times tauntingly remarked, and in quarters from whence a
more generous judgment might be expected, that, after all, Lord Byron
effected but little for Greece: as if much _could_ be effected by a single
individual, and in so short a time, for a cause which, fought as it has
been almost incessantly through the six years since his death, has
required nothing less than the intervention of all the great powers of
Europe to give it a chance of success, and, even so, has not yet succeeded.
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