As a man he was an enigma to the world, and doubtless to himself: he was
bad, but he was bold. If he was vindictive, he was generous; if he was
misanthropic and sceptical, it was partly because he despised shams: in
all his actions, we see that implicit working out of his own nature, which
not only conceals nothing, but even exaggerates his own faults. His
antecedents were bad;--his father was a villain; his grand-uncle a
murderer; his mother a woman of violent temper; and himself, with all this
legacy, a man of powerful passions. If evil is in any degree to be
palliated because it is hereditary, those who most condemn it in the
abstract, may still look with compassionate leniency upon the career of
Lord Byron.
THOMAS MOORE.--Emphatically the creature of his age, Moore wrote
sentimental songs in melodious language to the old airs of Ireland, and
used them as an instrument to excite the Irish people in the struggle they
were engaged in against English misgovernment. But his songs were true
neither to tradition nor to nature; they placed before the ardent Celtic
fancy an Irish glory and grandeur entirely different from the reality.
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