The poetical works of lord Byron, ed. with a critical mem. by W. M. Rossetti

Greece; bitter the dismay of the civilised world; bitter the self-re proaches of many Englishmen.

The corpse was brought home, and buried in the family-vault at Hucknall, near Newstead. The will of Lord Byron left to his sister, Mrs Leigh, the bulk of his property, beyond such as was settled on his wife and daughter. While at Venice, he had given to Moore a fragmentary autobiography, consisting principally of a narrative of his married life, with many highly-spiced details concerning friends and acquaintances. The fortunate recipient had disposed of this prize to the publisher Murray the latter consulted Mrs Leigh, and Byron's executor, Hobhouse, and, with their approval, committed the MS. to the flames. Moore has intimated that a great deal of it could not possibly have been published-not even at a date remote from the writer's death; and that the portions most material to the life of Byron himself are substantially reproduced in his published journals and other memoranda.

Wilfulness was probably the leading characteristic of Byron as a man himself was his centre, and a very uncertain centre too, for he was not less wayward than wilful and egotistic. He had no leading principle of action, and, had he had one, would have been perpetually violating it. We must take him as he stands—a dazzling and a tantalizing phenomenon. How many hearts has he not thrilled with rapture and suspense! how many "well-regulated minds" has he not lashed or laughed into rage!

His poetry has two main constituents-passion and wit. Were we compelled rigidly to assess the value of these two constituents, according to the positive merit of their respective products, we should probably have to say that the wit was the finer power of the two. The great superiority of Don Juan (and, as a minor sample, the Vision of Judgment) to all his other work, consists ultimately in this-that here the passion and the wit are perpetually interpenetrating and enhancing one another, and are both perfectly limpid and unforced. There is no overloading or attitudinising in the passion; in the wit, no conventional standard of substance or of form. It is not, however, necessary to settle with any nicety the rival claims of passion and of wit as the informing powers of Byron's work; nor even does the mind acquiesce in either or both of these excellent qualities as the final characteristics. The great thing in Byron is GENIUS-that quality so perilous to define, so evanescent in its aroma, so impossible to mistake. If ever a man breathed whom we recognise (athwart much poor and useless work, when strictly tested) as emphatically the Genius, that man was Byron : and, if ever genius made poetry its mouthpiece, covering with its transcendent utterances a multitude of sins whether against art or against the full stature of perfect manhood, Byron's is that poetry. It is therefore as imperishable as genius itself. Its forms have much of the transitory, much even of the spurious: they have already been "found out" to a great extent, and, after suffering a term of more than merited depreciation by reaction, are righting themselves in rather a battered and blowzed condition. But these are the forms: the essence is the genius, and that knows no vicissitude, and acknowledges no fleeting jurisdiction.

W. M. ROSSETTI.

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ALL my friends, learned and unlearned, have urged me not to publish this Satire with my name. If I were to be "turned from the career of my humour by quibbles qu'ck, and paper bullets of the brain," I should have complied with their counsel; but I am not to be terrified by abuse, or bullied by reviewers, with or without arms. I can safely say that I have attacked none personally, who did not commence on the offensive. An author's works are public property: he who purchases may judge, and publish his opinion if he pleases; and the authors I have endeavoured to commemorate may do by me as I have done by them: I dare say they will succeed better in condemning my scribblings than in mending their own. But my object is not to prove that I can write well, but, if possible, to make others write better.

As the poem has met with far more success than I expected, I have endeavoured in this edition to make some additions and alterations, to render it more worthy of public perusa!.

In the First Edition of this Satire, published anonymously, fourteen lines on the subject of Bowles's Pope were written by, and inserted at the request of, an ingenious friend of mine, who has now in the press a volume of poetry. In the present edition they are erased, and some of my own substituted in their stead; my only reason for this being that which I conceive would operate with any other person in the same manner, a determination not to publish with my name any production which was not entirely and exclusively my own composition.

With regard to the real talents of many of the poetical persons whose performances are mentioned or alluded to in the following pages, it is presumed by the author that there can be little difference of opinion in the public at large; though, like other sectaries, each has his separate tabernacle of proselytes, by whom his abilities are overrated, his faults overlooked, and his metrical canons received without scruple and without consideration. But the unquestionable possession of considerable genius by several of the writers here censured, renders their mental prostitution more to be regretted. Imbecility may be pitied, or, at worst, laughed at and forgotten; perverted powers demand the most decided reprehension. No one can wish more than the author, that some known and able writer had undertaken their exposure; but Mr Gifford has devoted himself to Massinger, and in the absence of the regular physician, a country practitioner may, in cases of absolute necessity, be allowed to prescribe his nostrum to prevent the extension of so deplorable an epidemic, provided there be no quackery in his treatment of the

malady. A caustic is here offered, as it is to be feared nothing short of actual cautery can recover the numerous patients afflicted with the present prevalent and distressing rabies for rhyming. As to the Edinburgh Reviewers, it would indeed require a Herculus to crush the Hydra; but if the author succeeds in merely "bruising one of the heads of the serpent," though his own hand should suffer in the encounter, he will be amply satisfied.

STILL must I hear?-shall hoarse Fitzgerald | The self-same road, but make my own review :

bawl

His creaking couplets in a tavern hall,
And I not sing, lest, haply, Scotch reviews
Should dub me scribbler, and denounce my

muse?

Prepare for rhyme-I'll publish right or wrong: Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.

Oh! nature's noblest gift-my grey-goose quill!

Slave of my thoughts, obedient to my will,
Torn from thy parent bird to form a pen,
That mighty instrument of little men!
The pen! foredoom'd to aid the mental throes
Of brains that labour, big with verse or prose,
Though nymphs forsake, and critics may deride,
The lover's solace, and the author's pride.
What wits, what poets, dost thou daily raise!
How frequent is thy use, how small thy praise!
Condemn'd at length to be forgotten quite,
With all the pages which 'twas thine to write.
But thou, at least, mine own especial pen
Once laid aside, but now assumed again,
Our task complete, like Hamet's, shall be free;
Though spurn'd by others, yet beloved by me:
Then let us soar to-day; no common theme,
No eastern vision, no distemper'd dream
Inspires-our path, though full of thorns, is
plain;

Smooth be the verse, and easy be the strain. When Vice triumphant holds her sovereign sway,

And men through life her willing slaves obey;
When Folly, frequent harbinger of crime,
Unfolds her motley store to suit the time;
When knaves and fools combined o'er all prevail,
When justice halts, and right begins to fail;
E'en then the boldest start from public sneers,
Afraid of shame, unknown to other fears,
More darkly sin, by satire kept in awe,
And shrink from ridicule, though not from law.
Such is the force of wit! but not belong
To me the arrows of satiric song;
The royal vices of our age demand
A keener weapon, and a mightier hand.
Still there are follies, e'en for me to chase,
And yield at least amusement in the race:
Laugh when I laugh, I seek no other fame;
The cry is and scribblers are my game.
Speed, Pegasus!-ye strains of great and small,
Ode, epic, elegy, have at you all!

up,

Itoo can scrawl, and once upon a time Ipour'd along the town a flood of rhyme: A schoolboy freak, unworthy praise or blame: I printed-older children do the same. "Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print; A book's a book, although there's nothing in't. Not that a title's sounding charm can save Or scrawl or scribbler from an equal grave: This Lambe must own, since his patrician name Fail'd to preserve the spurious farce from shame. No matter, George continues still to write, Though now the name is veil'd from public sight. Moved by the great example, I pursue

Not seek great Jeffrey's, yet like him will be Self-constituted judge of poesy.

A man must serve his time to every trade Save censure-critics all are ready made. Take hackney'd jokes from Miller, got by rote, With just enough of learning to misquote; A mind well skill'd to find or forge a fault; A turn for punning, call it Attic salt; To Jeffrey go, be silent and discreet, His pay is just ten sterling pounds per sheet: Fear not to lie, 'twill seem a lucky hit ; Shrink not from blasphemy, 'twill pass for wit; Care not for feeling-pass your proper jest, And stand a critic, hated yet caress'd.

And shall we own such judgment? No: as

soon

Seek roses in December-ice in June;
Hope constancy in wind, or corn in chaff;
Believe a woman or an epitaph,

Or any other thing that's false, before
You trust in critics, who themselves are sore;
Or yield one single thought to be misled
By Jeffrey's heart, or Lambe's Boeotian head. *
To these young tyrants, by themselves
misplaced,

Combined usurpers on the throne of taste;
To these, when authors bend in humble awe,
And hail their voice as truth, their word as law-
While these are censors, 'twould be sin to spare;
While such are critics, why should I forbear?
But yet, so near all modern worthies run,
'Tis doubtful when to seek, or whom to shun;
Nor know we whom to spare, or where to strike,
Our bards and censors are so much alike.

Then should you ask me, why I venture o'er The path that Pope and Gifford † trod before; If not yet sicken'd, you can still proceed: Go on; my rhyme will tell you as you read. "But hold!" exclaims a friend, "here's some neglect:

This-that-and t'other line seem incorrect." What then? the self-same blunder Pope has got, And careless Dryden-"Ay, but Pye has not:"Indeed!-'tis granted, faith!--but what care I? Better to err with Pope, than shine with Pye.

Time was, ere yet in these degenerate days Ignoble themes obtain'd mistaken praise, When sense and wit with allied, poesy No fabled graces, flourish'd side by side; From the same fount their inspiration drew, And, rear'd by taste, bloom'd fairer as they grew. Then, in this happy isle, a Pope's pure strain Sought the rapt soul to charm, nor sought in vain; A polish'd nation's praise aspired to claim, And raised the people's, as the poet's fame. Like him great Dryden pour'd the tide of song,

*Messrs Jeffrey and Lambe are the Alpha and Omega, the first and last, of the Edinburgh Review; the others are mentioned hereafter.

† Author of the Baviad and Mæviad, and first editor of the Quarterly Review.

In stream less smooth, indeed, yet doubly strong. Then Congreve's scenes could cheer, or Otway's melt

For nature then an English audience felt.
But why these names, or greater still, retrace,
When all to feebler bards resign their place?
Yet to such times our lingering looks are cast,
When taste and reason with those times are past.
Now look around, and turn each trifling page,
Survey the precious works that please the age;
This truth at least let satire's self allow,

No dearth of bards can be complain'd of now.
The loaded press beneath her labour groans,
And printer's devils shake their weary bones;
While Southey's epics cram the creaking shelves,
And Little's lyrics shine in hot-press'd twelves.
Thus saith the preacher: "Nought beneath the

sun

Is new;

run:

yet still from change to change we

What varied wonders tempt us as they pass!
The cow-pox, tractors, galvanism, and gas,
In turns appear, to make the vulgar stare,
Till the swoll'n bubble bursts-and all is air!
Nor less new schools of Poetry arise,
Where dull pretenders grapple for the prize:
O'er taste awhile these pseudo-bards prevail;
Each country book-club bows the knee to Baal,
And, hurling lawful genius from the throne,
Erects a shrine and idol of its own;

Some leaden calf-but whom it matters not,
From soaring Southey down to grovelling Stott.
Behold! in various throngs the scribbling crew,
For notice eager, pass in long review:
Each spurs his jaded Pegasus apace,
And rhyme and blank maintain an equal race;
Sonnets on sonnets crowd, and ode on ode;
And tales of terror jostle on the road;
Immeasurable measures move along ;
For simpering folly loves a varied song,
To strange mysterious dulness still the friend,
Admires the strain she cannot comprehend.
Thus lays of minstrels-may they be the last!-
On half-strung harps whine mournful to the blast;
While mountain spirits prate to river sprites,
That dames may listen to the sound at nights;
And goblin brats, of Gilpin Horner's brood,
border nobles through the wood,
Decoy young
And skip at every step, Lord knows how high,
And frighten foolish babes, the Lord knows why;
While high-born ladies in their magic cell,
Forbidding knights to read who cannot spell,
Despatch a courier to a wizard's grave,
And fight with honest men to shield a knave.
Next view in state, proud prancing on his roan,
The golden-crested haughty Marmion,
Now forging scrolls, now foremost in the fight,
Not quite a felon, yet but half a knight,
The gibbet or the field prepared to grace;
A mighty mixture of the great and base.
And think'st thou, Scott! by vain conceit per-
chance,

On public taste to foist thy stale romance,
Though Murray with his Miller may combine
To yield thy muse just half-a-crown per line?
No! when the sons of song descend to trade,

* T. Moore.

Stott, better known in the Morning Post by the name of Hafiz.

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When Homer swept the lyre, and Maro sung,
An epic scarce ten centuries could claim,
While awe-struck nations hail'd the magic name:
The work of each immortal bard appears
The single wonder of a thousand years.
Empires have moulder'd from the face of earth,
Tongues have expired with those who gave
them birth,

Without the glory such a strain can give,
As even in ruin bids the language live.
Not so with us, though minor bards content,
On one great work a life of labour spent:
With eagle pinion soaring to the skies,
Behold the ballad-monger Southey rise!
To him let Camoëns, Milton, Tasso yield,
Whose annual strains, like armies, take the field.
First in the ranks see Joan of Arc advance,
The scourge of England, and the boast of France!
Though burnt by wicked Bedford for a witch,
Behold her statue placed in glory's niche;
Her fetters burst, and just released from prison,
A virgin phoenix from her ashes risen.
Next see tremendous Thalaba come on,"
Arabia's monstrous, wild, and wondrous son;
Domdaniel's dread destroyer, who o'erthrew
More mad magicians than the world ere knew.
For ever reign-the rival of Tom Thumb!
Immortal hero! all thy foes o'ercome,
Since startled metre fled before thy face,
Well wert thou doom'd the last of all the race!
Illustrious conqueror of common sense!
Well might triumphant genii bear thee hence,
Cacique in Mexico, and prince in Wales;
Now, last and greatest, Madoc spreads his sails,
Tells us strange tales, as other travellers do,
More old than Mandeville's, and not so true.
O! Southey! Southey! cease thy varied song!
A bard may chant too often and too long:
As thou art strong in verse, in mercy spare!
A fourth, alas, were more than we could bear.
But if, in spite of all the world can say,
Thou still wilt verseward plod thy weary way;
If still in Berkley ballads most uncivil,
Thou wilt devote old women to the devil, t
The babe unborn thy dread intent may rue :
"God help thee," Southey, and thy readers too.

Next comes the dull disciple of thy school,
That mild apostate from poetic rule,
The simple Wordsworth, framer of a lay

Thalaba, Southey's second poem.

† See The Old Woman of Berkley, a ballad by Southey.

As soft as evening in his favourite May,
Hibernian Strangford! with thine eyes of blue,
Who warns his friend "to shake off toil and And boasted locks of red or auburn hue,

trouble,

And quit his books, for fear of growing double;"
Who, both by precept and example, shows
That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose;
Convincing all, by demonstration plain,
Poetic souls delight in prose insane;
And Christmas stories tortured into rhyme
Contain the essence of the true sublime.
Thus, when he tells the tale of Betty Foy,
The idiot mother of "an idiot boy;"
A moon-struck, silly lad, who lost his way,
And, like his bard, confounded night with day;
So close on each pathetic part he dwells,
And each adventure so sublimely tells,
That all who view the "idiot in his glory,"
Conceive the bard the hero of the story.

Shall gentle Coleridge pass unnoticed here, To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear? Though themes of innocence amuse him best, Yet still obscurity's a welcome guest. If Inspiration should her aid refuse To him who takes a pixy for a muse," Yet none in lofty numbers can surpass The bard who soars to elegize an ass. How well the subject suits his noble mind, "A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind." Oh! wonder-working Lewis! monk, or bard, Who fain wouldst make Parnassus a churchyard! Lo! wreaths of yew, not laurel, bind thy brow, Thy muse a sprite, Apollo's sexton thou! Whether on ancient tombs thou tak'st thy stand, By gibbering spectres hail'd, thy kindred band; Or tracest chaste descriptions on thy page, To please the females of our modest age: All hail, M.P.! from whose infernal brain Thin-sheeted phantoms glide, a grisly train; At whose command "grim women throng in crowds,

And kings of fire, of water, and of clouds, With "small grey men,' "wild yagers," and

what not,

To crown with honour thee and Walter Scott;
Again, all hail! if tales like thine may please,
St Luke alone can vanquish the disease;
Even Satan's self with thee might dread to dwell,
And in thy skull discern a deeper hell.

Who in soft guise, surrounded by a choir
Of virgins melting, not to Vesta's fire,
With sparkling eyes, and cheek by passion
flush'd,

Strikes his wild lyre, whilst listening dames are hush'd?

'Tis Little! young Catullus of his day,
As sweet, but as immoral, in his lay!
Grieved to condemn, the muse must still be just,
Nor spare melodious advocates of lust.
Pure is the flame which o'er her altar burns;
From grosser incense with disgust she turns:
Yet kind to youth, this expiation o'er,

She bids thee "mend thy line and sin no more.'
For thee, translator of the tinsel song,
To whom such glittering ornaments belong,

*Coleridge's Poems, page 11, Songs of the Pixies, i.e., Devonshire fairies; p. 42, we have Lines to a Young Lady; and p. 52, Lines to a Young Ass.

Whose plaintive strain each love-sick miss

Be warm, but pure; be amorous, but be chaste; Cease to deceive; thy pilfer'd harp restore, Nor teach the Lusian bard to copy Moore.

In many marble-cover'd volumes view
Hayley, in vain attempting something new;
Whether he spin his comedies in rhyme,
Or scrawl, as Wood and Barclay walk, 'gainst
time,

His style in youth or age is still the same,
For ever feeble and for ever tame.

Triumphant first see Temper's Triumphs shine!
At least I'm sure they triumph'd over mine.
Of Music's Triumphis all who read may swear,
That luckless music never triumph'd there.

Moravians, rise! bestow some meet reward
On dull devotion-Lo! the Sabbath bard,
Sepulchral Grahame, pours his notes sublime
In mangled prose, nor e'en aspires to rhyme;
Breaks into blank the Gospel of St Luke,
And boldly pilfers from the Pentateuch;
And, undisturbed by conscientious qualms,
Perverts the Prophets, and purloins the Psalms.

Hail, Sympathy! thy soft idea brings A thousand visions of a thousand things, And shows, dissolved in thine own melting tears, The maudlin prince of mournful sonneteers. And art thou not their prince, harmonious Bowles! Thou first, great oracle of tender souls? Whether in sighing winds thou seek'st relief, Or consolation in a yellow leaf; Whether thy muse most lamentably tells What merry sounds proceed from Oxford bells; Or, still in bells delighting, finds a friend In every chime that jingled from Ostend; Ah! how much juster were thy muse's hap, If to thy bells thou wouldst but add a cap! Delightful Bowles! still blessing and still blest, "Tis thine, with gentle Little's moral song, All love thy strain, but children like it best. To soothe the mania of the amorous throng! With thee our nursery damsels shed their tears, Ere miss as yet completes her infant years; But in her teens thy whining powers are vainNow to soft themes thou scornest to confine She quits poor Bowles for Little's purer strain. The lofty numbers of a harp like thine;

Awake a louder and a loftier strain,'

Such as none heard before, or will again!
Where all discoveries jumbled from the flood,
Since first the leaky ark reposed in mud,

By more or less, are sung in every book,
From Captain Noah down to Captain Cook.
Nor this alone; but, pausing on the road,

*Hayley's two most notorious verse productions are Triumphs of Temper and Triumphs of Music.

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