That much of Byron’s popularity was due to the intrinsic merits of his productions, may not seem strange. Had they possessed the same characteristic, the same singularity, and been far less brilliant they would have elicited immense admiration. Still, there is no mystery in this. No other poet, perhaps, ancient or modern, ever possessed the same happy blending of southern exuberance and vividness, with the deep-inspired, psychological mysticism of the north. Apart then from his originality, which is every poet’s inheritance, and a good command of words, this blending is, in its extraordinary degree, the chief among Lord Byron’s claims to merit; together with the—certainly in him unique and only too apparent—dash of Satanic leaven that raised unceasingly the frothy acid. Dante, perhaps, of all the southern poets, possessed most of the spiritualism that breathes in dark Druidical forests; but his heavy philosophy weighs down the mind, and it staggers along in pursuit of that sublime spiritualism, that is to most intellects, after all, but an _ignis fatuus_. From Byron’s poetic palace, from time to time, bursts forth, like a Bacchanalian, a round of untamed music, that revels nakedly in perfect abandonment: now leaping by long and rapid strides o’er chords of melody, towering up, up, up, through the vasty dome; new groaning through the double bass of trembling passion. Anon there unrolls a resplendent transparency of southern hues, that, at times, dart boldly into the endless fantasies of the kaleidoscope; again melt into blending prismata, or swimming circles unconceived of but through the distorted iris of a compressed eye-ball. At times, too, one strays through vast and sounding halls that reëcho but the wandering footsteps of a moody mind alone there by chance. At times, too, in some silent, sombre, far-distant recess, mid withe-bound, faggoty columns of Gothic mould, whose lofty branches are hung with ivy cold and mistletoe-bough, there glows suspended the blue ethereal flame of northern superstition, in a floorless chamber from whose mystic depths go forth the sinewy phantoms of the house of Woden. Anon there bursts an unearthly sound and glare that shakes and illumines the whole vast structure; and one almost hears the deliberate laugh of diabolic glee.