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Gapes round the silent circle's loaded walls. Bounds with one lashing spring the mighty

brute,

And, wildly staring, spurns with sounding foot The sand, nor blindly rushes on the foe;

Are sought in vain; and o'er each moul

dering tower,

Dim with the mist of years, grey flits the shade of power." p. 62.

The next stanza developes, we

Here, there, he points his threatening front, imagine, the grand source of all the

to suit

His first attack, wide waving to and fro His angry tail: red rolls his eye's dilated

glow." p. 45.

Our next extract shall be part of an ode, addressed to Inez, about this point of the tour, and which may assist as a foundation for some of our concluding observations.

"And dost thou ask, what secret woe

I bear, corroding joy and youth;
And wilt thou vainly seek to know
A pang, e'en thou must fail to soothe?
It is not love, it is not hate,

Nor low ambition's honours lost,
That bids me loathe my present state,
And fly from all I prized the most.
It is that weariness that springs

From all I meet, or hear, or see:
To me no pleasure beauty brings;
Thine eyes have scarce a charm for me.
It is that settled ceaseless gloom

The fabled Hebrew wanderer bore;
That will not look beyond the tomb,

But cannot hope for rest before. What exile from himself can flee?

To zones, though more and more remote, Still, still pursues, where'er I be,

The blight of life, the demon thought. Through many a clime 'tis mine to go,

With many a retrospection curst, And all my solace is to know,

Whate'er betides, I've known the worst. What is that worst?-nay, do not ask ; In pity from the search forbear: Smile on, nor venture to unmask Man's heart, and view the hell that's there." p. 53.

The second canto brings us at once to Athens and the following fine lines.

"Ancient of days! august Athena! whereWhere are thy men of might? thy grand in soul? Gone-glimmering through the dream of things that were.

First in the race that lead to glory's goal, They were, and passed away-is this the

whole?

A schoolboy's tale-the wonder of an hour The warrior's weapons and the sophist's stole

gloom and bad passions displayed in the volume. Speaking still of Athens, he says,

"Even gods must yield-religions take their

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Vainly his incense soars, his victim bleeds; Poor child of doubt and death, whose hope is built on reeds." Ibid.

In other words, that all religion is gross delusion. If good poetry could apologise for bad divinity, the following soliloquy on a skull might apologise for the last extract.

"Look on its broken arch, its ruined wall, Its chambers desolate, and portals foul: Yes, this was once ambition's airy hall, The dome of thought, the palace of the soul.

Behold through each lack lustre, eyeless hole, The gay recess of wisdom and of wit, And passion's host, that never brooked control:

Can all, saint, sage, or sophist ever writ→ People this lonely tower, this tenement refit?"

P. 64.

Then, as a substitute for "feeble" orthodoxy, he recommends to us this, obviously in his own case efficacious, remedy for gloom:

"Pursue what chance or fate proclaimeth best;

Peace waits us on the shores of Acheron.”

The description of the convoy sailing is finely executed, but we pass it over to give the truly beautiful portrait of "Solitude," which follows:

"To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, To slowly trace the forest's shady scene, Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,

And mortal foot-path ne'er, or rarely been; To climb the trackless mountain all unseen, With the wild flock, that never needs a

fold;

Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean:

This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold Converse with Nature's charms, and see her

stores unroll'd.

"But midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of

men,

To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess, To roam along, the world's tir'd deuizen,

With none who bless us, none whom we can bless;

Minions of splendour, shrinking from distress! None that with kindred consciousness endued,

If we were not, would seem to smile the less Of all that flatter'd, follow'd, sought and sued:

This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!" p. 74.

In the 32d stanza, he goes out of his way to tell us, what a little modesty would have veiled, that he

once

"Was not unskilful in the spoiler's art,

And spread its snare licentious far and wide."

Then comes an invocation to

Then mayest thou be restored; but not till

then.

A thousand years scarce serve to form a state;

An hour may lay it in the dust: and when Can man its shatter'd splendour renovate, Recal its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate?" p. 103.

"Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild; Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy

fields,

Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smil'd, And still his honied wealth Hymettus yields;

There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds,

The freeborn wanderer of thy mountain air;

Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds,

Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare;

Art,glory, freedom fails, but Nature still is fair.

"Where'er we tread, 'tis haunted, holy ground; No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould! -But one vast realm of wonder spreads around,

And all the Muse's tales seem truly told, Till the sense aches with gazing to behold The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon :

Sappho, as truly pagan as Sappho Each bill and dale, each deepening glen and

herself could desire.

"Dark Sappho, could not verse immortal save

That breast imbued with such immortal fire; Could she not live, who life eternal gave, If life eternal may await the lyre, That only heaven to which earth's children may aspire."

After some spirited delineation of Albanian scenery, we arrive at the following stimulating stanzas to the prostate cities of ancient Greece.

"Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth! Immortal, though no more; though fallen, great!

Who now shall lead thy scattered children forth,

And long accustom'd bondage uncreate? Not such thy sons who whilome did await, The hopeless warriors of a willing doom, In bleak. Thermopyla's sepulchral strait

Oh! who that gallant spirit shall resume, Leap from Eurota's banks, and call thee from

the tomb?" p. 101.

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wold,

Defies the power which crush'd thy temples

gone:

Age slakes Athena's tower, but spares gray Marathon." p. 105.

The poem soon after concludes, and the author disappears something like Hamlet's melancholy ghost, when, on snuffing the morning air, he reluctantly returns to his shades; for Lord Byron also, as he tells us, is compelled to plunge into all the vices, the corroding flame of which all the waters of the Mediterranean had not been able to quench.

"Then must I plunge again into the crowd,

And follow all that Peace disdains to seek, Where Revel calls, and Laughter, vainly loud,

False to the heart,distorts the hollow cheek."

The Noble Lord, we lament to hear, has obeyed this wretched destiny; and is to be seen, we fear, in almost every temple but that where an altar of refuge is erected for the disconsolate.

Having by these extracts endeavoured to put our readers in posses

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sion of some of the finest parts of this poem, and also of those passages which determine its moral complexion, we shall proceed to offer a few remarks upon its character and pretensions in both points of view.

The poem is in the stanza of Spenser-a stanza of which we think it difficult to say whether the excellencies or defects are the greatest. The paramount advantage is the variety of tone and pause of which it admits. The great disadvantages are, the constraint of such complicated rhymes, and the long suspension of the sense, especially in the latter half of the stanza. The noblest conception and most brilliant diction must be sacrificed, if four words in one place, and three in another, cannot be found rhyming to each other. And as to the suspension of the sense, we are persuaded that no man reads a single stanza without feeling a sort of strain upon the intellect and lungs-a kind of suffocation of mind and body, before he can either discover the lingering meaning, or pronounce the nine lines. To us, we confess that the rhyming couplets of Mr. Scott, sometimes deviating into alternate rhymes, are, on both these accounts, infinitely preferable. One of the ends of poetry is to relax, and the artificial and elaborate stanza of Spenser costs us too much trouble, even in the reading, to accomplish this end. To effect this, the sense should come to us, instead of our going far and wide in quest of the sense. In our conception also, the heroic line of ten syllables, though favourable to the most dignified order of poetry, appears to limp when forced into the service of sonneteers and poems in the metre before us, are, after all, little better than a string of sonnets; of which it is the constituent principle to be rather pretty than grand-rather tender than martial-rather conceited than wise to keep the sense suspended for eight lines, and to discharge it with a point in the ninth. These observations are by no means designed to apply especially to the

author-the extreme gravity of whose general manner and matter, in a measure covet the dignity of the heroic line. But it is this discordancy of measure and subject, toge ther with the obviously laboured rhymes and the halting of the sense, which in general, we think, have shut out the Spenserian school from popular reading, and have caused a distinguished critic* to say, that the "Faiery Queen will not often be read through;" and that, although it maintains its place upon the shelf, it is seldom found on the table of the modern library.

Whilst, however, Lord Byron participates in this defect of his great original, he is to be congratu lated, as a poet, but alas! in his poetical character alone, on much happy deviation from him. In the first place, he has altogether washed his hands of allegory; a species of fiction open to a thousand objections. In the next place, he is infinitely more brief than his prototype. And in the third place, he philosophizes and moralizes (though not indeed in a very sound strain), as well as paints-provides food for the mind as well as the eye---kindles the feeling as well as gratifies the sense. Thus far, then, we are among the admirers of his Lordship. But it is to be lamented, that what was well conceived is, from the temperament of his mind, ill executed; that his philo sophy is, strictly speaking, "only philosophy so called;" that the moral emotions he feels, and is likely to communicate, are of a character rather to offend and pollute the mind, than to sooth or to improve it. This defect, however, we fear, is to be charged, not upon the poet, but upon the man, at least upon his principles. But, whatever be the cause, the consequences are dreadful. Indeed, we do not hesitate to say, that the temperament of his mind is the ruin of his poem. We shall take the liberty, as we have intimated, of touching upon these defects as moral delinquencies, under another head; but

• Hume.

for the present we wish to notice them merely as poetical errors.

The legitimate object, then, of poetry, as we have said, is to instruct by pleasing; and, cæteris paribus, that poem is the best which conveys the noblest lessons in the most attractive form. If, in reply to this, it is urged that the heathen poets, and especially Homer, taught no lesson to his readers; we answer, that he taught all the lessons which, in his own days, were deemed of highest importance to his country. The first object of philosophers and other teachers, in those days, was to make good soldiers, and therefore to condemn the vices which interfered with successful warfare. Now be it remembered, that the grand topic of the Iliad is the fatal influence of the wrath of kings on the success of armies. Its first words are MHNIN aside. Besides this, the Iljad upholds the national mythology, or the only accredited religion; and by a bold fiction, bordering upon truth, displays in an Elysium and Tartarus, the eternal mansions of the good and bad, the strongest incenLive to virtue and penalty of vice. Indeed, that both this and the Odyssey had a moral object, and that this object was recognized by the ancients, may be inferred from Horace, who says of Homer, in reference to the first poem:

«Qui, quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non,

Plenius ac melius Chrysippo aut Crantore dicit."

And as to the second:

"Rursum-quid virtus, et quid sapientia
possit,

Utile proposuit nobis exemplar Ulyssem."
Epist. i. 2.

Many of the Odes of Horace had a patriotic object---his Epistles and Satires, with those of Juvenal and Persius, were the sermons of the day. Virgil chiefly proposed to himself to exalt in his hero the character of a patriot, and, in his fictitious history, the dignity of his coun

try. If the lessons they taught were
of small importance or doubtful va-
teach"
lue, or if they often forget to "
in their ambition to "please," this is.
to be charged rather on the age
than on the poet. They taught the
best lessons they knew; and were
satisfied to please only when they had
nothing better to do. In modern
times, it will not be questioned that
the greatest poets have ever endea-
voured to enshrine some moral or
intellectual object in their verse.
Milton calls Spenser "our sage se-
rious Spenser, whom I dare to be
known to think a better teacher than
Scotus or Aquinas." In like manner,
the Absalom and Achitophel, the
Hind and Panther of Dryden, the
philosophic strain of Pope, the im-
mortal page of Milton, and the half-
inspired numbers of the Task, are
all, in their various ways, attempts
of poets to improve or reform the
world. Every species of poetry, in-
deed, has received fresh lustre, and
even taken a new place in Parnas-
sian dignity, by a larger infusion of
moral sentiment into its numbers.
The ancient ballad has arisen to new
dignity through the moral touches,
we wish they had been less rare, of
a Scott; and the stanza of Spenser has
acquired new interest in the hands of
Lord Byron, from the philosophical
air which it wears. Numbers with-
out morals are the man without "the
glory." We sincerely wish that the
moral tone of his Lordship's poem
had been less liable to exception.

His Lordship, we believe, is acquainted with ancient authors. Let him turn to Quinctilian, and he will find a whole chapter to prove that a great writer must be a good man. Let him go to Longinus, and he will read that a man who would write sublimely, "must spare no labour to educate his soul to grandeur, and impregnate it with great and generous ideas"--that "the faculties of the soul will then grow stupid, their spirit will be lost, and good sense and genius lie in ruins, when the care and study of man is engaged about the mortal, the worthless part

of himself, and he has ceased to cul-
tivate virtue, and polish his nobler
part, his soul." Or, if poetical autho-
rity alone will satisfy a poet, let
him learn from one of the finest of
our modern poems:

"But of our souls the high-born loftier part,
Th' ethereal energies that touch the heart,
Conceptions ardent, laboring thought intense,
Creative fancy's wild magnificence,
And all the dread sublimities of song:
These, Virtue, these to thee alone belong:
Chill'd, by the breath of vice, their radiance

dies,

And brightest burns when lighted at the skies;

Like vestal flames to purest bosoms given, And kindled only by a ray from heaven"." That the object of poetry, however, is not simply to instruct, but to "instruct by pleasing," is too obvious to need a proof. However the original object of measure and rhythm may have been to graft truth on the memory, and associate it with music; they are perpetuated by the universal conviction that they delight the ear. Like the armour which adorns the modern hall, they were contrived for use, but are continued for ornament.

us into a Thersites or a Caliban; or lodge us, as fellow-grumblers, in the stye of Diogenes, or any of his two or four-footed snarling or moody posterity. Now his Lordship, we trust, is accessible upon much higher grounds; but he will perceive that mere regard for his poetical reputation ought to induce him to change his manner. If, as Longinus instructs us, a man must feel sublimely to write sublimely, a poet must find pleasure in the objects of nature before him, if he hope to give pleasure to others. Let him remember, that not merely his conceptions, but his mind and character, are to be imparted to us in his verse. He will, in a measure,

"

stamp an image of himself!" The fire with which we are to glow must issue from him. Till this change take place in him, then, he can be no great poet. It is Heraclitus who mourns in his pages, or Zeno who scolds, or Zoilus who lashes; but we look in vain for the poet, for the living fountain of our innocent pleasures, for the artificer of our literary delight, for the hand which, as by enchantment, snatches us from the little cares of life, whirls us into the boundless regions of imagination, 68

exhausting" one "world," and imagining others, to supply pictures which may refresh and charm the mind. Lord Byron shews us man and nature, like the phantasmagoria, in shade; whereas, in poetry at least, we desire to see them illuminated by all the friendly rays which a benevolent imagination can impart.

Assuming this, then, to be a just definition of poetry, we repeat our assertion, that, in the work before us, the temperament of mind in the poet creates the grand defect of the poetry. If poetry should instruct, then he is a defective poet whose lessons rather revolt than improve the mind. If poetry should please, then he is a bad poet who offends the eye by calling up the most hideous images---who shews the world We have hitherto confined ourthrough a discoloured medium-selves to an examination of the inwho warms the heart by no gene- fluence of the principles and temper rous feelings---who uniformly turns of this work upon its literary preto us the worst side of men and tensions; but his Lordship will forthings---who goes on his way grum- give us if we now put off the mere bling, and labours hard to make his critic for a moment, and address readers as peevish and wretched as him in that graver character which himself. The tendency of the strain we assume to ourselves in the title of of Homer is to transform us for the our work. In truth, we are deeply moment into heroes of Cowper, into saints; af Milton, into angels: but Lord Byron would almost degrade *Grant's Restoration of Learning in the East.

* We cannot resist the temptation of saypoet's art, we know no living poet who will ing, that in this highest department of the bear a comparison with Mr. Southey.

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