DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.55699#0111
LORD BYRON’S PALACE.
83
indeed, would have been nothing without the Venetian
sunsets.”
Those painful feelings of regret with which Lord By-
ron looked back upon his residence at Venice, attended,
in some degree, every retrospect of his life. He had
doomed himself to the most unhappy of all pursuits-
that of pleasure—falsely so called. With a spirit ca-
pable of appreciating those high and exquisite gratifica-
tions which follow upon pure and noble designs 5 with a
genius fitted to carry those designs into honourable exe-
cution, and with a thousand generous qualities of heart
to adorn and illustrate the splendid exertions of his in-
tellect, the life of Lord Byron might well have won for
him the admiration, the respect, and the affection of the
world. Had he dedicated to the service of others the
genius which he lavished on the shrine of his own false
fame, had he looked for happiness where it is alone to
be found, not in the vanity of sensual pleasures, not in
the race of personal ambition, but in the pursuit of those
lofty duties which, while they elevate the character, fill
and satisfy the heart, how widely different would have
been his feelings ! Shame for mispent time, and regret
for misapplied powers, filled with bitterness a heart which
a sense of no other ambition would have awakened to
the purest pleasures.
But, unfortunately, the ambition of Lord Byron was
entirely personal.—His poetry, his letters, his conversa-
tions, are filled with multiplied images of himself. In
his most momentous as well as in his most trifling actions,
in parliament and in the drawing-room, there was the
same consciousness of personal display, the same sensi-
g 2
83
indeed, would have been nothing without the Venetian
sunsets.”
Those painful feelings of regret with which Lord By-
ron looked back upon his residence at Venice, attended,
in some degree, every retrospect of his life. He had
doomed himself to the most unhappy of all pursuits-
that of pleasure—falsely so called. With a spirit ca-
pable of appreciating those high and exquisite gratifica-
tions which follow upon pure and noble designs 5 with a
genius fitted to carry those designs into honourable exe-
cution, and with a thousand generous qualities of heart
to adorn and illustrate the splendid exertions of his in-
tellect, the life of Lord Byron might well have won for
him the admiration, the respect, and the affection of the
world. Had he dedicated to the service of others the
genius which he lavished on the shrine of his own false
fame, had he looked for happiness where it is alone to
be found, not in the vanity of sensual pleasures, not in
the race of personal ambition, but in the pursuit of those
lofty duties which, while they elevate the character, fill
and satisfy the heart, how widely different would have
been his feelings ! Shame for mispent time, and regret
for misapplied powers, filled with bitterness a heart which
a sense of no other ambition would have awakened to
the purest pleasures.
But, unfortunately, the ambition of Lord Byron was
entirely personal.—His poetry, his letters, his conversa-
tions, are filled with multiplied images of himself. In
his most momentous as well as in his most trifling actions,
in parliament and in the drawing-room, there was the
same consciousness of personal display, the same sensi-
g 2