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D. 1859.

"AT thirteen," says De Quincey, "I wrote Greek with ease; and at fifteen my command of that language was so great, that I not only composed Greek verses in lyric metres, but could converse in Greek fluently, and without embarrassment, an accomplishment which I have not since met with in any scholar of my times, and which, in my case, was owing to the practice of daily reading off the newspapers into the best Greek I could furnish extempore. ... 'That boy,' said one of my masters, pointing the attention of a stranger to me, that boy could harangue an Athenian mob better than you or I could address an English one.'" 1

B. 1788.

LORD BYRON.

D. 1824.

(George Gordon Noel.)

MANY of the poets have been great egotists, and their heroes often seem only modified portraits of themselves. Byron is as much his own Cain, or his own Don Juan, as Goethe is his own Faust, or Milton his own Satan. They look for and find the grandest ideals of intellectual force in themselves.

1 George P. Marsh, while Minister at Constantinople, was sent on a special mission to Greece, and, it is said, was quite competent to carry on conversation in the Greek language, although there is much difference in the language of modern Greece from that of Homer and Plato.

Byron was not unwilling to style himself "the Napoleon of rhyme," perhaps with some truth; but it should be remembered that his "Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte," after his fall and captivity at St. Helena, was not a flattering portrait of the ex-emperor :

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If Byron went to Greece, not to fight for glory, but, as has been said, to be rid of Madame Guiccioli, his own life is robbed of its heroic conclusion.

In most of Byron's poetry he is supposed to be the chief figure. For instance, he says:

"For I am as a weed

Flung from the rock, on ocean's foam to sail,

Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath prevail."

And again he draws his own portrait as follows:

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Lord Byron was very apprehensive that he might be excluded from the Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey, the "temple" where Great Britain gathers her honored dead. His doubt is disclosed in the following melancholy accents:

"I twine

My hopes of being remembered in my line
With my land's language; if too fond and far
These aspirations in their scope incline, —
If my fame should be, as my fortunes are,

Of hasty growth and blight, and dull oblivion bar
My name from out the temple where the dead

Are honored by the nations - let it be —

And light the laurels on a loftier head !”

"If I live," he wrote to Moore, Feb. 28, 1817, "ten years longer, you will see, however, that it is not over with me, I don't mean in literature, for that is nothing; and it may seem odd enough to say, I do not think it my vocation. But you will see that I will do something or other the times and fortune permit

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ting — that, like the cosmogony or creation of the world, will puzzle the philosophers of all ages.' But I doubt whether my constitution will hold out." This would seem to contradict his "hopes of being remembered in my line with my land's language." But it is uncertain whether he was then dreaming of becoming King of Greece, or of dying like a hero fighting against the Turks.

According to Leigh Hunt's diary, Byron angrily returned a box of pills to an apothecary because the packet was directed to Mr. Byron instead of Lord Byron. But Hunt was not eager to show any goodwill to Byron.

Byron wrote with marvellous rapidity. He threw off "The Corsair" in ten days, "The Bride of Abydos" in four. While his poems were printing,

he added to and corrected them, but never re-cast them. "I told you before," he writes, "that I never re-cast anything. I am like the tiger: if I miss the first spring, I go grumbling back to my jungle again; but if I do it, it is crushing."

After the first two cantos of "Childe Harold" had been published, he said, "I awoke one morning and found myself famous."

B 1793. WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. D. 1873.

THE egotism of Macready, as appears from his published "Diary" of 1843, was a trifle large :

"Oct. 23. Acted Macbeth equal, if not superior, as a whole, to any performance I have ever given of the character. I should say it was a noble piece of art. Called for warmly, and warmly received. The Miss Cushman who acted Lady Macbeth interested me much. She has to learn her art, but she showed mind and sympathy with me,-a novelty so refreshing to me on the stage."

B. 1795.

THOMAS CARLYLE.

D. 1881.

IN 1820 Carlyle wrote a letter to his mother, from which the following is an extract :

"I am not of a humor to care very much for good or evil fortune, so far as concerns myself. The thought that my somewhat uncertain condition gives

you uneasiness chiefly grieves me. Yet I would not have you despair of your ribe of a boy. He will do something yet. He is a shy, stingy soul, and very likely has a higher notion of his parts than others have. But, on the other hand, he is not incapable of diligence. He is harmless, and possesses the virtue of his countrymen, -thrift; so that, after all, things will yet be right in the end. My love to all the little

ones.

"Your affectionate son,

"T. CARLYLE."

Thomas Carlyle in 1832 had been waiting long in vain to find a publisher for his "History of the French Revolution," and felt that the world was in its "dotage" because it was not more appreciative of his merits. He writes: "I have given up the notion of hawking my little manuscript book about any further for a long time it has lain quiet in its drawer, waiting for a better day. The bookselling trade seems on the edge of dissolution."

The work was not published until even five years after this, and then his graphic history fully justified the high opinion of the author.

Carlyle wrote to his brother, John Carlyle, Jan. 12, 1835, as follows: "In a word, my prospects here are not sensibly brightening; if it be not in this, that the longer I live among this people the deeper grows my feeling not a vain one- a sad one of natural superiority over them; of being able (were the tools

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