Each scene that charm'd us once displays 'Till the fond vision, kindling on the brain, But ah! so bright the dream that paints the past, CHARACTER OF LORD BYRON. THE name of Byron should now, like that of Milton or Shakspeare, be only known in the history of literature and the records of immortality. The little jealousies and perishable interests which fretted themselves against his living fame, as they have done against that of the great men of all ages, have no longer any influence over the tribunal of opinion. The pure principles by which mind is estimated, must now try his claims to public admiration, and not the fears, the ignorance, or the passions of men. In the history of human genius, its powers, and its weakness, there never was a man whose abilities and conduct excited more ardent attention, and afforded more of real and speculative topic for praise and defamation than Lord Byron. He entered the world of poetry as Chatham did that of eloquence, scarcely heard of in the lists until he had obtained the first honours of the conflict. As the resentment of Walpole called forth from the young orator the first resistless flashes of an eloquence that burned in inextinguishable splendour to the last hour of his earthly glory, so did the repulse which was given to the boyish aspirings of the noble bard discover to himself, by the re-action it created, all the resources of his intellect, and place him, at once, on the splendid summit of poetic ambition. The excitement did not so much inflame his passions as exasperate his genius, and thenceforth, in ceasing to appear amiable, he became what men more admiredaring, vindictive, and successful. By nature generous and confiding, he was, by the privilege of genius, sudden and impetuous. Minds of such fine formation look at human life, either through the vivid glow of fancy, or the gloom of irritated sensibility. So Byron's early imagination made him hope too highly of the world, and his experience caused him to think too badly of it. The disappointments which his unsuspecting spirit endured from the companions of his pleasures, or the mercenary flatterers whom rank, and opulence, and fame attract, reduced his estimate of human nature, not only far below his own preconceived notions, but beneath its proper level. Born to ornament and grace society, he seemed, for a great part of his short life, to study only how he could most effectually desert it. To a man, however, of his creative invention, every wilderness would be peopled with the ideal beings with whom his thoughts could communicate; and perhaps he was often supposed to be indulging in the morose seclusion of the misanthrope, when he was only enjoying the dreams of a high and splendid imagination. Though gay and cheerful in his intercourse with mankind, and full of sportive hirality in the convivial hour, yet his generally reserved habits, and the peculiar tone of his poetry, gave him, in the popular eyes, a sort of mysterious and gloomy fame, of which he did not seem anxious to remove the impression. His fondness for the delineation of one character of sullen, wayward, desperate purpose, animated by the most devoted love and least placable revenge-terrible to his enemies-fascinating to his followers, and spreading around desolation of the passions, or dark influence of distempered sensibility, was taken as proof that he only pourtrayed from his own heart this the favourite hero of his poetry. But a presumption so founded is very fallacious. The opinion was, indeed, entertained by some of the first critics of the day, but it is not improbable that they sacrificed philosophical accuracy to tragic effect. If there were any bard whose intellect had more of the divine emanation than another, it was John Milton, and yet he succeeded best in the awful description of satanic majesty. It is not difficult to discover, in his Paradise Lost, that the celestial goodness and power had the affection of his morals; but certainly the reckless and ambitious spirit of evil that desolated the world, and audaciously confronted the lightnings of its Creator, was the hero of his genius. Satan never looked to human thoughts so sublime before the imagination of the great poet clothed the " Archangel ruined" in all his desperate glory. Yet was there nothing diabolical in the character of Milton; never was there a man who showed in the nobler union the imaginative faculty with the spirit of inflexible virtue; or who, "though fallen on evil days and evil tongues," burned with a more intense zeal for enlightened freedom, and the improvement of the world. But it is the prerogative of the first class of genius so to describe ideal existence, as to make it appear part of its own moral identity. Inferior minds can hardly conceive how a poet can embody thoughts into the counterfeit of some reality, of which he has had no experience. The man who advanced the spirit and language of poetry beyond the limits of his age, and who, in the foresight of his genius, anticipated a century of improvement, was the inventor of the incorrigible and malicious barbarism of Caliban. His intellect was enamoured of the invention, as we may see from the spirit and richness with which he pourtrayed it; but neither his morals nor his mind had any sympathy with the subject. Why, then, should it be thought fair to attempt to measure the moral qualities of Byron by a test which is evidently erroneous when applied to the characters of those great men, who, in the originality and daring vigour of his inspiration, he most resembled? That first attribute of the poetic mind-creative power, Byron eminently possessed. At his first appearance, every possible variety of poetic style and subject was supposed to be ascertained, if not exhausted; yet he created a new era. He was erratic, it is true, but he deviated from the beaten track to make rich discoveries; his eagle spirit, enamoured of the sun, rushed on a powerful wing into the oriental world, and carried away the "barbaric pearls and gold," which the magic of his genius converted into ornaments worthy the immortal temple of the muses. He proved that the fictions of the East, though the offspring of the soil of voluptuous barbarism, can be wedded to higher qualities of mind than such as are required to describe the absurd mysteries and monsters- the won derous unrealities and gorgeous scenery of Arabian enchantments. In the Giaour, he has adopted the circumstances, the scenery, and perhaps the plot, from the land of demons and genii; but he has invested them in the sentiments which only the most gifted inspiration dictates. He has described the faithful, timid, but enduring affection of woman, springing up in the land of sensual barbarity, like the fair white lily, that lays forth its snowy lustre on the stagnant pool; and he has delineated the wild, headlong career of fierce masculine devotion, with as much energy of thought and charm of poetry as ever was lavished upon the passion or fortunes of successless love. He has shown also a perfect conception of what is fine, and beautiful, and grand in nature, by his picturing, with singular power, the luxuriant and terrific region, where the soft climate wafts balmy airs and sweeping pestilence, and where the fire of the scorpion mingles with the freshness of the flowers. Above all has he given the workings of passion on the mind itself-the sufferings of the despairing but tameless spirit-the revenge that survives the destruction of its enemy -the agony of a fidelity whose object is beyond the grave-the extinction of hope, and the collected torments of recollection, with a power of moral scrutiny and exposure that, if it ever was excelled, can own no superiority but in the author of Macbeth and Hamlet. The rapid and careless spirit of Byron seldom indulged in prettiness of thought or nicety of expression. He was as bold in his language as he was daring and lofty in his conceptions. His thoughts shaped themselves into words, either with blameable negligence or enchanting felicity; but the latter was chiefly their characteristic. In most of the exquisite small poems in which love is his subject, he is the poet of its sentiment rather than of its passion. His muse is not so ardent and amorous as tender and devoted. On great subjects, where he struck the chord of battle, or raised the song of freedom, he has an eloquence that seizes the reason, and carries all the heart along with it -clear, strong, and impetuous, it is full of power and grace, and music and fascination. The Concetti of the Italian school of poetry, as well as the frigid declamation of the French, his manly sense and strong imagination disdained. He sent bold thoughts in the voice of nature to the heart. The mechanical facility which refines upon poetic sentiment until it becomes cold and passionless-the elaborate assortment and nice adaption of the petty wares of a glittering fancy, which reduce the divine fame of poetry to the level of the jeweller's art, who sets his gems or his paste, as it may be, with the cold determination to dazzle, Byron never thought of. His poetry rose or sunk into grandeur or weakness with the inequality of his inspiration, as the ocean fluctuates under the breathings of the heavens. He has been accused of a proneness to adopt the ideas of others. He could do so without impeachment of his originality. Whatever he borrowed he invested almost always with a peculiar charm, that made it his own. This was not plagiarism, but generous imitation; and he, like other great poets, has frequently been accused of the former without just ground, by those small critics who cannot distinguish between poetic larceny, and accidental coincidences of genius. He has certainly much that was unworthy of him-much that was below the quality of his mind and the spirit of his ambition. He who contended for the prize of strength or swiftness in the Olympic games, was tried only by the best efforts of his skill and power. So should genius be estimated only by its greatest works, for those which are below itself are not parts of its fame, but only the more earthly matter, which would have sunk into oblivion, but for the excellence of the diviner productions, which made them buoyant, and floated them into celebrity. Swift has not lost his reputation as a wit, by having written some things that were dull, and his having been addicted even to the senseless habit of punning. Pope's Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, in which he attempted supremacy. to rival the lyric grandeur of Dryden, the noblest thoughts that philosophy would have lowered him to a level with ever breathed under the dictation of some of the heroes of his own Dun- the muse. There are not, in all the ciad, if that were made the standard range of our poetry, any sentiments of of his fame. And the Paradise Re- more beauty, pathos, originality, and gained would, on the same principle, elevation, than those throughout have lost Milton his claim to epic Childe Harold and the Giaour, which are suggested by the scenery of Greece, and the mournful and grand associations with which it fills the civilized mind. With what a fervour of the heart's devotion does he not wake the lyre on this melancholy and enchanting subject? How touching his sorrows over the fallen land of arts and song! How manly and inspiring his call to awake her from the long, cold trance of debasement! How full of a deep interest in her future fate, and of the animation of her remembered glory! Passages like these elevate the soul in the midst of those fictions in which the fancy wooes enjoyment. They infuse the preservatives of virtue -heroic thoughts, and generous emotions, and thus they display the superiority of truth and wisdom in the most attractive light, by the contrast of their splendour with the surrounding dark and awful scenery of moral ruin. Let Byron then be appreciated like others, by his best productions, and he will stand, in all that constitutes genuine poetry, among the first men of any age or nation, and among those of his own day, superior and alone. The Giaour, the Corsair, Childe Harold, parts of his Don Juan, many of his smaller pieces, and even frequent passages in his least estimable works, are of the first stamp of immortal verse. The first and second especially, for intensity of thought, depth of moral delineation, descriptive vigour, and the union of the anatomy of the passions, and the feelings, with Homeric boldness of action. The Childe Harold is particularly interesting for the strains of a wandering and delicious minstrelsy, which twines, with the most touching sentiments, all the recollection to which history consecrates her favourite scenes to the peculiar veneration of mankind. It is objected, that these poems were not written with any moral intention. They have, however, a strong moral tendency; they exhibit, in a most appalling manner, the desolating effects of unrestrained passion on the strongest minds, consuming virtue, withering up the very intellect, and creating a desert around the infatuated victim of his own wild indulgence. If there be no moral in such an exposure of human hardihood, crime, and selfinfliction, we must deny all the instructive effects of example. Byron has not clothed the evil principle with the charm of success, but torturing passion, blighted hopes, and distempered mind, perform that vengeance on guilt, which more vulgar moralists would visit with the hacknied scourge of worldly adversity, or the rack of the executioner. But independently of the stories themselves, there are passages in the course of these poems replete with After mourning over the fallen pride the broken lyre-the lost intelligence the banished virtues of Greece, he lived to see her rise again from chains and dishonour, and shake off the dust of her humility on the trampled turban of her oppressors. He lived to see her vessels float again in triumph through Salamis, and her warlike youth stem the torrent of the invader in the sacred straits of Thermopylæ. He lived to raise the song of battle for the cohorts of Greece, armed for vengeance and freedom, and to see chiefs conquer and fall, who were worthy of interment in the tomb of Leonidas. Had he survived to commemorate them on his lyre, his genius would have been both the incitement of the living, and the fame of the dead; but Providence chose to take away this modern Tyrtæus from reviving Greece before her redemption was accomplished. His mission of virtue and glory had scarcely begun on the soil of Homer, Solon, and Miltiades, when his earthly days were numbered, and immortality received him. 1 May the world forget his faultsand Greece remember his example. Let her not droop over his urn, but carry his spirit to the conflict; let a just revenge appease his shade-her own liberation will be the best tribute to his memory. His genius will command admiration, while the language of England survives to bear his fame above the silence of the grave. But should Greece prevail, there will his name have peculiar honours, and a sanctuary from all detraction. His memory will be identified with her second glory. His inspired exhortations to freedom will be remembered as the voice of prophetic virtue. It will be recollected that he was the last to lament over her fallen and degraded state, when there was no ray of hope upon it, the first to hail her regeneration. May his dying words still lead on the cause to which his splendid powers were consecrated, although his. charmed mantle has fallen on no successor. HE COMETH! A PARAPHRASE.* BY JOHN S. CLARK, ESQ. FEAR no more, Israel, the avenging rod,- From 40th chapter of Isaiah. |