men's minds at that period. "Childe Harold," even in its complete form, is no finished whole, no work of art in the higher sense; the requisite repose and depth were wanting alike for the creation and for the enjoyment of such a work. It is a string of pearls of opinions and thoughts on questions of philosophy and politics in a brilliant and highly poetical setting; and what many scarcely ventured to think, they found there set forth in bold and lofty expression. The dissatisfaction so energetically uttered by the poet, on the part which England played in the affairs of the world, was felt and recognized with especial earnestness by a great part of the nation. With this was blended the fascination of a mysterious personality, which Byron had interwoven with his poetry; from the beginning he aimed at shrouding himself in a veil of mysterious interest, and at making the public the confidant of his sorrows. -KARL ElzE. "Childe Harold" is, I think, a very clever poem, but gives no good symptom of the writer's heart or morals.... Vice ought to be a little more modest, and it must require impudence almost equal to the noble Lord's other powers to claim sympathy gravely for the ennui arising from his being tired of his wassailers and his paramours. There is a monstrous deal of conceit in it, too, for it is informing the inferior part of the world that their little old-fashioned scruples of limitation are not worthy of his regard. My noble friend is something like my old peacock, who chooses to bivouac apart from his lady, and sit below my bedroom window to keep me awake with his screeching lamentation. Only I own he is not equal in melody to Lord Byron.-SIR WALTER Scott. ... The great charm of "Childe Harold," however, we believe-its chief popular attraction-lay in the wanderer himself, shadowy as he is, and vague in personality. He was, let us remember, the very first sketch of that blasé poetical misanthrope who has since done so much service, and who, in many different disguises, charmed the popular soul for years after, the very incarnation of the conventional picturesque. He it was who gave the charm of romance to all those melodious verses which celebrated the praises of "August Athena," of "Stern Albania's hills," and "Dark Suli's rock," and, nearer home, of "Lovely Spain, renowned romantic land!" The reader, as he roamed from verse to verse among the dark-eyed Lusitanian maids and Turkish houris, between the wild Albanian and the high-capped Tartar, was always conscious of another standing by, trying to distract himself by all the scenes and figures that passed along the surface of the panorama, but ever hugging to him his mysterious solitude, his passionate recollections, his inconsolable sadness. There was not very much absolutely about Harold except in the first few pages; but Harold was in the very air, brooding over the verse. Every line was read with a little thrill of expectation; throughout every page attention was on the alert to find again that wanderer in his splendid superiority, seeing everything as if he saw it not, occupied with his own thoughts, musing over his fatal memories. And when a universal whisper ran through the world-a whisper which nobody could trace and still less contradict -that the poet himself was that mysterious personage, the interest swelled higher and deeper. All the internal evidence was in favor of this idea, and the immediate zest of a living romance spread over the reading world. The story, slight and vague as it was, became real on the spot, and people poured over it with a view to discovering the secret of the poet's trouble as well as the quality of his genius. Such an addition to the attractions of poetic literature it would be difficult to over-estimate. The lovers of Byron will grudge, perhaps, that any secondary reason should be called in in order to explain the first marvellous success of this poem; and had "Childe Harold" been published entire we should have sought no secondary reasons; but it must be remembered that it was to the first two cantos that the world responded with enthusiasm so universal, and that these are not the portions of the poem to which we now turn with the greatest pleasure. The beauty of the poetry, indeed, is not enough to explain its immense popularity; for fine as that is, it is not finer than portions of Shelley's long descriptive poems, which won nobody's ear; and nothing like so real as Wordsworth's, which shared the same fate. And long stretches of descriptive poetry, however fine, are slow to attract the ordinary reader. It was Harold who attracted him. It was Byron, the real Harold, who riveted that attraction. He fascinated the world as every novel development of a trite fancy does. No straining of faculties was necessary to comprehend him. He was most lofty, grand, and superior, and yet he was within reach of every capacity. The guide-book details with which he chose to surround himself grew sublime because of that cynic smile, that "hollow laugh," that scowl and sigh. Never was there a more perfect hit, a more successful combination of the poetical and ethereal with the commonplace; and this brilliant hit, this popular success, was expressed in the language of true poetry, brilliant and vigorous. When these elements which are so seldom combined came together, the result was not mere applause, but a very triumph.... In the third canto the poet comes to his majority, as it were, bursting through all the husks of budding genius, and revealing himself in his full proportions, in all the passion and power of his nature and of his genius. It is curious to pass, as so many readers have probably done, with nothing more than a dim wonder at the change, and consciousness that they "liked better" the conclusion than the beginning-from the tame beauty and artificial mysteriousness of the first part of "Childe Harold" to the burning and glowing power of the second. The third canto is full of verses which have been as household words to us all our lives. Scarcely a line occurs which does not figure somewhere as a quotation. It is Byron's highest success in serious poetry. One great effort - his last and most triumphant work-was still to be commenced; but out of "Don Juan" there is nothing to be found in his productions which is comparable to the splendor and force of the third canto of "Childe Harold." The sketch of the Eve of Waterloo-that brilliant piece of dramatic description which perhaps one in ten of all Englishmen have got by heart one time or other, or know by heart without learning-and the almost equally popular but somewhat theatrical and inflated storm among the mountains, will come to every one's mind; but it is not merely in such episodes as these that the great tide of increased vigor shows itself. Every line is instinct with new force.LITTELL's Living Age, August 17, 1872. The third and fourth cantos of "Childe Harold" placed Lord Byron on another platform-that of the Dii Majores of English verse. These cantos are separated from their predecessors, not by a stage, but by a gulf. Previous to their publication he had only shown how far the force of rhapsody could go; now he struck with his right hand and from the shoulder. Knowledge of life and study of nature were the mainsprings of a growth which the indirect influence of Wordsworth and the happy companionship of Shel'ley played their part in fostering. Faultlessness is seldom a characteristic of impetuous verse, never of Byron's; and even in the later parts of the "Childe" there are careless lines and doubtful images. "Self-exiled Harold wanders forth again," looking "pale and interesting;" but we are soon refreshed by a higher note. No familiarity can detract from Waterloo, which holds its own by Barbour's "Bannockburn" and Scott's "Flodden."... The descriptions in both cantos perpetually rise from a basis of rhetoric to a real height of poetry. Byron's "Rhine" flows, like the river itself, in a stream of "exulting and abounding" stanzas. His "Venice" may be set beside the masterpieces of Ruskin's prose. They are together the joint pride of Italy and England. The tempest in the third canto is, in verse, a splendid microcosm of the favorite, if not the prevailing, mood of the writer's mind. In spite of manifest flaws, the nine stanzas beginning "It is the hush of night" have enough in them to feed a high reputation. The poet's dying day, his sun and moon contending over the Rhætian hill, his Thrasymene, Clitumnus, and Velino show that his eye has grown keener, and his imagery at least more terse, and that he can occasionally forget himself in his surroundings. The Drachenfells, Ehrenbreitstein, the Alps, Lake Leman pass before us like a series of dissolving views. But the stability of the book depends on its being a Temple of Fame as well as a Diorama of Scenery. It is no mere versified Guide, because every resting-place in the pilgrimage is made interesting by association with illustrious memories. Coblentz introduces the tribute to Marceau; Clarens, an almost complete review, in five verses, of Rousseau; Lausanne and Ferney the quintessence of criticism on Gibbon and Voltaire. A tomb in Arqua suggests Petrarch; the grass-grown streets of Ferrara lead in the lines on Tasso; the white walls of the Etrurian Athens bring back Alfieri and Michael Angelo, and the prose bard of the hundred tales, and Dante, "buried by the upbraiding shore," and "The starry Galileo and his woes." Byron has made himself so master of the glories and the wrecks of Rome that almost everything else that has been said of them seems superfluous. Hawthorne, in his "Marble Faun," comes nearest to him; but Byron's Gladiator and Apollo, if not his Laocoon, are unequalled. - PROFESSOR NICHOL. STUDY OF "MANFRED." Byron called this piece his "Witch Drama," and in a letter to his publisher, Murray, gives its outline: "It is in three acts, but of a very wild, metaphysical, and inexplicable kind. Almost all the persons, but two or three, are Spirits of the earth and air, or the waters; the scene is in the Alps; the hero is a kind of magician, who is tormented by a species of remorse, the cause of which is left half unexplained. He wanders about invoking these Spirits, which appear to him, and are of no use; he at last goes to the very abode of the Evil Principle, in propria persond, to evocate a ghost, which appears, and gives him an |