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My restlessness tells me I have something within that * passeth show ! ' It is for Him who made it , to prolong that spark of celestial fire which illuminates , yet burns , this frail tenement ; but I see no such horror in a f dreamless sleep / and I hare no conception of any existence which duration would not render
tiresome . How else * fell the angels , ' even according to your creed ? They were immortal , heavenly , and happy as their apostate Abdtel is now by his treachery . Time must decide ; and eternity won't be the less agreeable or more horrible because one did not expect it . In the mean time , I am grateful for some good , and tolerably patient under certain evils—grace a Dieu et man bon temperament . "— P . 455 .
Though there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of the foregoing passage , it is but fair to give , as a set-off , some lines which we elsewhere find : " Forget this world , my restless sprite ; Turn , turn thy thoughts to Heav ' u : There must thou soon direct thy flight , If errors are forgiven . To bigots and to sects unknown , Bow down beneath th * Almighty ' s throne ;—
To him address thy trembling prayer ; He , who is merciful and just , Will not reject a child of dust , Although his meanest care . Father of Light ! to thee I call , My soul is dark within ; Thou , who canst mark the sparrow fall , Avert the death of sin . Thou , who canst guide the wandering star , Who calm'st the elemental war ,
Whose mantle is yon boundless sky , My thoughts , my words , my crimes forgive ; And , since I soon must cease to live , Instruct rue how to die . " The delicate and difficult subject of Lord Byron ' s scepticism is beautifully handled by his biographer . Mr . Moore has , in this instance , as in most others , admirably combined the fidelity of the
historian with the tenderness of the friend . His task has been one of peculiar difficulty . To exhibit , with a friendly hand , the singularities of the most singular of minds ; to reveal its deformities while bespeaking due honour to its beauties ; to abstain from extenuation or eulogy , where the temptation to both is peculiarly powerful , evinces no little principle , judgment , and taste . The minor excellences of biography also abound . The style is simple , the narra-
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tive conducted with grace , and animated throughout with an interest , the credit of which ought , perhaps , to attach , in some degree , to the narrator , as well as to his subject . The plenitude of the details has surprised and gratified us ;
but their interest , alas ! only aggravates our repinings for what we have lost . The following passages will shew how well Mr . Moore understood , auH can made others understand , the niceties of the subject of which he treats .
* The general character which he bore among the masters at Harrow was that of an idle boy , who would never learn any thing ; and , as far as regarded his tasks in school , this reputation was , by his own avowal , not ill founded . It is impossible , indeed , to look through the books which he had then in use , and which are scribbled over with clumsily interlined translations , without being struck with the narrow extent of his
classical attainments . The most ordinary Greek words have their English signification scrawled under them , —shewing too plainly that he was not sufficiently familiarized with their meaning to trust himself without this aid . Thus , in his Xenophon , we find veo * , young— aroaacnv , bodies— -av&gamoiq toiq ccya&ou ; , good men , &c , &c . —and even in the volumes of Greek plays which he presented to the library on his departure , we observe , among other instances , the common word
% gvo-o <; provided with its English representative in the margin . But , notwithstanding his backwardness in the mere verbal scholarship , ou which so large and precious a portion of life is wasted , in all that general and miscellaneous knowledge which is alone useful in the world , he was making rapid and even wonderful progress . With a mind too
inquisitive and excursive to be imprisoned within statutable limits , he flew to subjects that interested his already manly tastes , with a zest which it is in vain to expect that the mere pedantries of school could inspire ; and the irregular , but ardent , snatches of stu ^ y which he caught in this way gave to a mind like his an impulse forwards , which left more
disciplined and plodding competitors far behind . The list , indeed , which he has left on record of the works , in all departments of literature , which he thus hastily and greedily devoured before he was fifteen years of age , is such as almost to startle belief , —comprising , as it does , a range and variety of study , which might make much older ' helluones librorum ' hide their heads . • • • ' To a youth like Byron , abounding
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126 Critical Notices . — Mucelluneous .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1830, page 126, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2581/page/54/
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