In all his works he unconsciously
depicts himself. He is in turn Childe Harold, Lara, the Corsair, and Don
Juan. He affected to despise the world's opinion so completely that he has
made himself appear worse than he really was--more profane, more
intemperate, more licentious. It is equally true that this tendency, added
to the fact that he was a handsome peer, had much to do with the immediate
popularity of his poems. There was also a paradoxical vanity, which does
not seem easily reconcilable with his misanthropy, that thus led him to
reproduce himself in a new dress in his dramas and tales. He paraded
himself as if, after all, he did value the world's opinion.
That he was one of the new romantic poets, with, however, a considerable
tincture of the transition school, may be readily discerned in his works:
his earlier poems are full of the conceits of the artificial age. His
_English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ reminds one of the _MacFlecknoe_ of
Dryden and _The Dunciad_ of Pope, without being as good as either.
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