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Lord Byron jugé par les témoins de sa vie (1869)
Lord Byron jug par les tmoins de sa vie - 1869 Author:Teresa Guiccioli Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. Portrait Of Lord Byron. The following letter was addressed to M. de Lamar- tine, who bad asked the author of these pages to give him the " port... more »rait physique" of Lord Byron. My Dear Monsieur De Lamartine, Being on the point of departure, I nevertheless wish to send you a few explanations which must serve as my apology. You have asked me to draw the portrait of Lord Byron, and I have promised you that I would do so. I now see that my promise was presumptuous. Every time I have endeavoured to trace it, I have had to put down my pen, discouraged as I was by the fact of my always discovering too many obstacles between my reminiscences and the possibility of expressing them. My attempts appeared to me at times to be a profanation by the smallness of their character ; at others, they bore the mark of an extreme enthusiasm, which, however, seemed to me very weak in its results and very ridiculous in its want of power. Images which are preserved in thought to a degree which may almost be considered supernatural, are susceptible of too much change during the short transit of the mind to the pen. The Almighty has created beings of such harmonious and ideal beauty that they defy description or PART. I. F analysis. Such a one was Lord Byron. His wonderful beauty of expression has never been rendered either by the brush of the painter or the sculptor's chisel. It summed up in one magnificent type the highest expression of every possible kind of beauty. If his genius and his great heart could have chosen a human form by which they could have been well represented, they could not have chosen another! Genius shone in his very looks. All the effects and emotions of a great soul were therein reflected as well as those of an eminently good and generous heart, and inde...« less