1818. seems to have visited none other of the children of men. The popular belief, that his heroes are himself, is a true belief; and the world has at last convinced the poet of that which he had at first but indistinctly understood, and imperfectly believed. His heroes are himself that is, either what he is, or has been, or what he would wish or fear to be. Whatever may have been his intention, there is in his mind a predominant consciousness of himself, which determines the character he draws. This appears most in the first two Cantos of Childe Harold, where his mind seems so enslaved to itself, that it cannot escape even from a direct jourBut much nal of his own travels. more than his characters are drawn from himself. Almost every feeling, passion, thought, or image, or represented object in his poetry, has magnitude and interest assigned to it, not in proportion to its plan in the poem, but to its direct interest to his own mind,and not to his imagination, but to his passions, and his life of passion. He thus seems seldom to go back to the early periods even of his own mind, and then but by fits and starts-but to be continually living in the last, almost the present years of his life. His is indeed a mind under the dominion of its passions, and which cannot escape from them even in imagination. This may, indeed must, make a sameness in his writings. But in proportion to their sameness is their varieriety. It is almost incredible, that a man producing continually the same passions and the same feelings, should produce them, as he has done, in such continual change of shape, that we never complain of repetition. This can only be owing to the unequalled intenseness of passion, which, like the power of life, is end lessly unfolding itself in new forms. It can only be the simple, natural, human force of the vivid utterance of intense passion, that produces in minds of every description so strong a sympathy with Byron in all his different moods, and too often, in spite of reluctance and repugnance, of moral and intellectual condemnation. But does not the question naturally arise, Is this the best, the noblest poetry? Is it fitting, is it truly great, that a highly-gifted spirit, potent by nature, and enriched by the highest studies, should voluntarily circumVOL. III. scribe the sphere of its dominion that He We must all feel that Byron, with all his mighty faculties, is at times only shielded from contempt, by the convic tion that many of his miseries are selfinflicted. They are often imaginary; and therefore is it that our imagination redeems him who awakens it. exasperates his soul into agony. He sinks it down into despair. But genius breathes forth the profoundest sighs that disturb us, and often converts them, in an instant, into an exulting hymn. And often the long majestic sweep of sorrow, that winds up a subduing stanza, is suddenly succeeded by airy music, as if in derision of the melancholy close; and Byron's soul bounds exultingly forward, escaping from the dim cell into which it had retired in voluntary imprisonment. Many awful lessons may certainly be learned from the poetry of Lord Byron. Yet, undoubtedly, there are many things there barren and unavailing. The good, the happy, and the innocent, can draw no instruction from what they cannot imagine even in dreams; while the erring or passion-stricken spirit contemplates, too often, the ruins as it were of its own nature, without hope of the temple being rebuilt, or if so, ever again being animated with the spirit that is fled. Of the danger resulting from such poetry to souls of fine aspirations, but unsteadfast wills,-to souls where pas sion is the only or chief impulse, and where there is a tendency to hold cheap, and in derision, the dull duties of ordinary life, and at the same time not strength sufficient to grasp and master the objects of a more ambitious existence, to such souls (and they are numerous among the youth of Brimost fatal which tain,) that poetry flings aside the antiquated bonds consecrated by mere every-day associations,-which renders reason itself subservient to the senses (ennobled as they are by the imagination), and ad 2 E mits no other laws of life but the tyrannic passions, cherished in the conscious pride of that power, which, in turn, uses those passions as its most abject slaves. If such may be the effects of Byron's poetry on good natures, it is to be feared that it may exert a lamentable influence over those prone to evil. There must appear in the splendour, and power, and majesty, wherein his genius enshrouds feelings and passions intrinsically worthless or pernicious, a fatal justification of that evil, from which, in its native nakedness, even the fallen spirit would turn with aversion. When virtue is dead, pride often remains in full life. It firmly fastens on representations like these, by which a veil is thrown over its own meanness, and a false but dazzling world is thus created for it, wherein it may move, and act as bold and fearless a part as virtue herself walking in her untroubled beauty. To Byron, and to great though erring spirits like his, we mournfully allow the privilege of his pride. It is a shirt of mail wherewith he would seek to guard his bosom from the shafts of sorrow. And it may be, that its folds sometimes indeed repel those "unkindest blows of all," against whose infliction the soul hath no other shield in its solitude. But with them whose passions tend only towards mere earthly objects-unsanctified by genius or by grief-reckless, importunate, and selfish-sacrificing to their indulgence, without compunction, the happiness of other hearts-how pernicious must that philosophy be (and the poetry of Byron is but too full of it), that lends robes of royalty, and a seeming sceptre to passions that are in themselves base, odious, and contemptible, or, haply, such as conduct to ruin, agony, and death. There is one school of poetry (we use the word somewhat unwillingly) from which this great Poet has already learned much, and from which his noble nature may yet learn more-the poetry of the Lakes. Byron need not be ashamed-nay, he must exult to be instructed by the wisdom of Wordsworth. Nothing can impair the originality of his genius; little need be added to its power. But a warning voice may arise from the untroubled magnificence of the mountain solitude, and the wandering "Childe" may pause in the darkest track of his pilgrimage, to hear the calm, pure, lofty anthem that the poet sings to nature in the sinless happiness which she has created, sanctified, and blest against violence or decay. Lord Byron seems to have roamed through the Alps with the spirit of Wordsworth often at his side-and his soul was elevated by the communion. It is cold and unmeaning to say, that in the third can to of Childe Harold, he imitated or competed with the author of the Excursion. He followed him-he was led by him-to the same eternal fountain of all beauty and all grandeur. Different as are the souls of these two illustrious men, nature bowed them down or elevated them up into similitude; so that in Byron's glorious songs among the Alps, we see the same soul at work that had before sublimed the mountains of England,-and are de- V lighted to behold how the calm wisdom of contemplative age and recluse philosophy can purify, and sustain, and strengthen, the impetuous energy of a wilder spirit, revelling deliriously among the maddening magnificence of nature. It would lead us into a most interesting, but difficult and long inquiry, were we to endeavour clearly to point out the connexion subsisting between much of Byron's late poetry, and the spirit of Wordsworth's and of some of his disciples. This we purpose doing on a future occasion. Suffice it to say, that such spiritual communion between two great poets, in many things so unlike, is honourable to both, and we fear not that we shall soon see the day, when Byron, escaping from the too severe dominion of his own passions, shall look abroad over nature with a wider sweep of speculation,become a happier, a better, a greater man, as the benign influences of nature are suffered to enter, unopposed, into the recesses of his heart, and that the penance which he has for so long endured, and often self-inflicted, shall be found to have fitted and disposed his soul for the reception and love of those lofty and universal truths, on which alone a splendid poetical reputation can ultimately rest, and by which alone he can hope to be of essential and lasting benefit to his fellow-mortals. He knows, that the great poet to whom we have alluded, though accused of bigotry, infatu ation, and narrowness of view, has. taken ampler and nobler prospects of the soul of man than any other living mind. He knows the depths of the calm of that wisdom, which the storms of the world cannot disturb. He knows that poetry is a divine artthat its influences are divine. And all may see scattered throughout the darkest scenery of his own soul, lights that seem as if they would fain break through the gloom, and that wait but for his will to shine on him and his spirit for evermore, and make him, what every great poet should be, the glad, exulting, hoping, undismayed, friend and vindicator of the immortal destinies of man. We said, that we should not criticise, and we have accordingly thrown out merely a few unformed feelings end reflections, which many of our readers may think but little illustrative of the subject immediately before us. But we may have touched a string, perhaps, in some meditative heart, and afforded food for thought to those who love to think and feel for themselves, and who, on that account, are contented to peruse with pleasure the most wandering reveries of others, when they seem to tend, at least, towards what is right and beautiful. We shall now give some extracts from the last, and perhaps the finest canto of Childe Harold, the finest, beyond all comparison, of Byron's poems. At the opening of the Fourth Canto, the Poet represents himself as standing upon a Bridge of Venice, and indulging himself in such a train of meditations as might well be excited by the decaying splendour, unexpected desertedness, and ancient glories of this romantic city. .1. I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; I saw from out the wave her structures rise 2. She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean, In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more, Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear, He then seems tacitly to reproach himself for taking all the subjects of his musing from among strangers, and bursts into one of the few truly patriotic pieces of poetry which are to be found in his works. 8. I've taught me other tongues-and in strange eyes Have made me not a stranger; to the mind The inviolate island of the sage and free, 9. Perhaps I loved it well and should I lay Are honoured by the nations-let it be- I planted, they have torn me, and I bleed; I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed. He then returns to Venice, and alludes to the well-known affection entertained by her inhabitants for the poetry of Tasso. 17. Thus, Venice, if no stronger claim were thine, Were all thy proud historic deeds forgot, And weave their web again; some, bow'd and bent, Wax gray and ghastly, withering ere their time, And perish with the reed on which they leant; Some seek devotion, toil, war, good, or crime, According as their souls were form'd to sink or climb: 23. But ever and anon of griefs subdued Back on the heart the weight which it would fling Aside for ever it may be a sound- Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound; 24. And how and why we know not, nor can trace Home to its cloud this lightning of the mind, But feel the shock renew'd, nor can efface The blight and blackening which it leaves behind, Which out of things familiar, undesign'd, When least we deem of such, calls up to view The spectres whom no exorcism can bind, The cold-the changed-perchance the dead -anew, The mourn'd, the loved, the lost-too many! -yet how few! Wearied with the contemplation of scenes so humiliating to the eye of man, the Poet and the Pilgrim, for they are now confessedly the same, rejoices to escape into the pure solitude of nature, and to sooth his mind with the survey of less transitory beauties. At Arqua, the little hamlet where Petrarch spent the last years of his life, and where his house, chair, &c. are still shewn to travellers, exactly as the relics of Shakspeare are at Stratford-upon-Avon, Byron is filled with admiration of the modest retreat selected by this illustrious poet, and enters fully, for a moment, into the quiet and self-subdued spirit of one with whom, in general, he appears to have very little in common. 32. And the soft quiet hamlet where he dwelt 33. Developing the mountains, leaves, and flowers, And shining in the brawling brook, where-by, The description of an Italian even ing on the banks of the Bretna, is one of the most beautiful passages in the poem. The poetry of Nature, which he has learned from Wordsworth, seems to be heightened and improved in his hands, by the unseen influence of the more glorious scenes and climates to which he has transferred it. 27. The Moon is up, and yet it is not night- 28. "A single star is at her side, and reigns With her o'er half the lovely heaven; but still Yon sunny sea heaves brightly, and remains Roll'd o'er the peak of the far Rhætian hill, As Day and Night contending were, until Nature reclaim'd her order :-gently flows The deep-dyed Brenta, where their hues instil The odorous purple of a new-born rose, Which streams upon her stream, and glass'd within it glows, 29. nities of petty tyrants, is well fitted to call up that mist of morbid contempt through which Lord Byron delights to look upon the frail pageants of external grandeur. At Florence he seems to have thought of little except the statues in the gallery, and the tombs in the church of Santa Croce. This, we think, is the first time that he has ever come directly upon the subject of art; and although he is careful to tell us how much he prefers a single green valley, or roaring cataract, and all the masterpieces of the chisel and the pencil, still his soul is so conversant with ideal creations of loveliness, majesty, and terror, that he speaks of the Venus, the Apollo, and the Laocoon, in a style which our readers will easily acknowledge to be far superior to any thing which the admiration of art had be fore embodied in English Poetry. 49. There is something to us inexpressibly touching in the transition from this splendid enthusiasm to the mournful shades of the Florentine cemetry. Never was more deep mean Fill'd with the face of heaven, which, from ing conveyed in one line than in the afar, eighth of this stanza. 54. In Santa Croce's holy precincts lie The particle of those sublimities Although the Venus is the only great statue of which he speaks when at Florence, we prefer to quote his verses concerning the Apollo and the Loacoon at the same time. 160. Go see Laocoon's torture dignifying painA father's love and inortal's agony With an immortal's patience blending:- Vain |