the head of a syren and the tail of a scorpion. Beauty is joined with sin, and sin is rendered delightful; nor does the young mind feel its error till it finds its ruin. From this censure, however, I must in justice exempt much of the last Canto that has come under my notice. Verses like these are not to be rejected because joined with strong and lamentable incongruities. They are to be held at their intrinsic value, and a wellregulated judgment will inform us what that value is.

You here and there indulge in allusions which we can hardly read without a smile. Surely calling for the Ægis of Pallas, and bustling up the Shade of Achilles to affright a noble Lord from taking away his marbles, is sufficiently ridiculous. It was an useful and a holy depredation, and may be defended on many grounds; but on what ground shall we apologize for his inconsistency in descanting upon the violation of the Parthenon, whose sacrilegious numbers have so often violated mosques, temples, churches, altars, and every thing bearing the shadow of a likeness to sacred and ancient institutions?

And yet, nothing daunted by this consciousness, have you the hardihood to observe, "The Parthenon, before its destruction in part, by fire during the Venetian siege, had been a temple, a church, and a mosque. In each point of view it is an object of regard. It changed its worshippers; but still it was a place of worship thrice

sacred to devotion: its violation is a triple sacrilege."*

In the wanderings of Childe Harold, you seem better to have preserved the scenery than the mind of our present European states. The libertinism of human nature, wherever found, you indeed paint with a pencil worthy of the subject; but the distinguishing characteristics of individual countries are lost amid that blaze of voluptuousness in which you involve every object. Your poem too, though long, is never didactic. You make your imaginary hero neither reflect nor teach to any good purpose. You remove him from place to place, not with the view of drawing forth what is estimable as he goes along, but in the vain effort of escaping reproachful recollections. In these excursions he sketches beautifully, it is true, the sceneries of Earth and the idolatries of Heaven: but, having done this, he feeds, like the progeny of sin, upon his own bowels, and falls back on those disgusting portraitures of self, which is evermore the narrow and primary object of his regard. It is impossible, therefore, to be sorry when the work is closed.

"But where is he, the Pilgrim of my song,
The being who upheld it through the past?
Methinks he cometh late and tarries long.
He is no more-these breathings are his last;
His wanderings done, his visions ebbing fast,

* Childe Harold, Canto ii. Note 2.

And he himself as nothing:-if he was
Aught but a phantasy, and could be class'd
With forms which live and suffer-let that pass-
His shadow fades away into Destruction's mass.'

Yes, my Lord, but his soul remains; his infidelity; his immorality. All the dark passions of that soul he has left behind him for the formation of future Harolds and the affliction of future generations. We shall sooner forget the beauties of this poem than its criminality. The one will occasionally elicit our admiration; the other will perpetually corrupt our hearts.

Pass we on to The Giaour, a Turkish Tale. Here you have chosen a subject ill according with any. chastised views of religion or morals. A female slave pays for her libidinous disposition with her life; and her paramour, a Christian in his creed, but a villain in his conduct, avenges one crime by the commission of another. Your hero throughout is a character composed of hardened and fiery feelings. He deliberately endangers the object of his love for the indulgence of his appetites, and, with a consciousness about him of the enormity of the offence, and of the just punishment that awaits it, would still seduce his mistress to the commission of that offence, and expose her to the severity of that punishment. It is, in short, a hateful story of passion determined upon gratification, though it wade through

*Canto iv. S. 164.

blood. And surely no woman can be much elated by the conquest of a heart, that, in the agony of death, exults in the commission of his crime, and confesses, on the very brink of eternity, that for the pleasure of another such illicit indulgence he would again endure the bitterness and the shame. If this be not carrying a criminal passion to its most debauched and dreadful excess, in what page, my Lord, of history, Heathen or Mahometan, shall we search to find it?

This poem, I perceive, purposes to be merely the fragment of a Turkish tale. Extracts and fragments are, I think, held to be no parts of sound learning, or of true poetry. They rather tend to the depreciation of both. They afford an opportunity of choosing, or rejecting, at pleasure, what we will, and thus break into that regular order and governance of the thoughts which alone can insure an enduring performance. We can judge from an arm, or hand, or other costly relic, of the exquisite sculpture of the figure now dilapidated or lost; but it does not seem so plain that these Parnassian gems are proofs of the capacity of the poet for greater performances. It may rather, perhaps, intimate that he has concentrated his genius, and brought his powers to their apex, and that, were he to proceed further, the "multa et præclara minantis" would vanish, his images become stale, and his execution spiritless.

In The Bride of Abydos, another Turkish tale, the woes are sung of seductive love and parental disobedience; of meditated assassination and open violence; of murder on the one part, and rebellion on the other. Giaffir is a bad character, and I am afraid Selim can hardly pass for a good one. There is, however, and I remark it with pleasure, no prophaneness, no licentiousness in this little story. Prophaneness was, indeed, not called for; and happily the purity of Zuleika forbids any approach to wantonness of description. She is one of the most fascinating of your heroines, only because she is one of the

most correct.

Still, over the purest of your female characters you contrive to cast some shade of suspicion that purity must wish away. You are not disposed to paint even a virtuous woman consistent in her virtue. You have represented Zuleika as binding herself to Selim by vows certainly not in consonance with their supposed consanguinity. Her promise never to bestow her hand without his consent, is a tacit acknowledgment that he may consider himself as the disposer of her affections. There is surely nothing in this very favourable to either her morals or her duty. The relation of Selim in the second Canto is, I think, long and uninteresting. And though, altogether, this must be considered as a prime production of your pen, it yet confirms the opinion