A Hundred Years Ago
TILE " SPECTATOR," SEPTEMBER 11TH, 1830.
Nes. ELWOOD'S TRAVELS.
Few men would like their wives to write a better book than this ; it is all that may be wished from a female pen, and nothing more. is elegant, lively, sensible, and in proper places trifling : this is, of course, the beau ideal of a female merit.
GALT'S LIFE OF 'BYRON.
. The mom elaborate passages of mock sublimity are innumerable. Of genius we are told- ' It is as the fragrance, independent of the freshness and complexion of the rose ; as the light on the cloud; as the bloom on the cheek of beauty, of which the possessor is unconscious until the charm has been seen by its influence on others ; it is the inter- nal golden flame of the opal ; a something which may be abstracted from the thing in- which it appears, without changing the quality of its substance, its form, or its affinities."
Love is " that strong masculine avidity which in its highest excite- ment is unrestrained by the laws, alike of God and man." In another page it is termed" animal-admiration."
Of the effect of the critique in the Edinburgh Review, on Lord Byron, Mr Galt says.. It stung his heart and prompted him to excess. But the paroxysms did not endure long ; strong volitions of revenge suc- ceeded, and the grasps of his mind were pled, as it were, with
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