vast and terrible images, that,-better than all the pleasures of existence, -prove its elevation in the scale of nature. Lord Byron, it is true, marks only the stronger divisions of the great picture; he is not skilful in running those cunning, delicate, and fine gradations, which the most refined fancies chiefly delight to distinguish ;-but he raises the voice of poetry, as it was wont to be raised, when the excitement of animation in assembled crowds was the minstrel's design. The voice indeed is not now the same in its accents that it was then, but, if it were, it would not have the same effect: the auditors are changed. He, however, conjures up the common inspirations of high and strong feeling: beauty, valour, danger, death, renown, and immortality; and these ideas he passes through the soul like quick-following flashes of lightning. This is his talent: his reasoning is generally bad; his mere "moods of his own mind," when not closely connected with some external cause of excitement, are very bad; his conception of character is monotonous and false; his sentiments are not often profound, and very often mingle in wild inconsistency with each other: he is pensive or enthusiastic on a theme in one page, which in another he treats with sarcasm or expressions of disgust. In style he is frequently tortuous, involved, clumsy, and affected: we are often tempted to suppose - he could not himself declare what his meaning was in particular passages, if they were referred to him for explanation. His metaphysics of the mind are in bad taste, and worse philosophy; and on his various offences in regard to moral tendency, and the respect which an author owes to himself, we have already too fully commented to have any occasion again to refer to them. Yet, with all these faults heaped on his writings, and staring the reader in the face, there is a principle of captivating power in them, supreme and triumphant above all faults; defying faults to lessen it; and attracting after the author, wherever he chooses to wander, a following train, formed of a nation's admiration and sympathy. He has awakened, by literary exertion, a more intense interest in his person han ever before resulted from lite

rature. He is thought of a hundred times, in the breasts of young and old, men and women, for once that any other author is,-popular as are many of his living rivals. He casts his shadow from afar over the sur face of our society; and he is talked of in book-clubs and ball-rooms as the only companion which the age has produced to the French revolu tion! Drawing much from deeper sources than his own, he has rendered palateable what the public taste before rejected. The most musical names of the world, those that sound, even in the ears of the uninstructed, as equivalent to the noblest ideas and the deepest feelings, are closely associated with his; for he has repeated and celebrated them so as to redouble their empire. Athens, Arqua, Rome, and Venice, fall within the territory over which he is lord: he has visited Waterloo as a foreigner, and Thermopyle as an Englishman; celebrated Napoleon's fall as a friend of liberty, and sung with rapture his triumphs as the bard of despotism: he has received letters from young ladies, anxious for his salvation; has been inquired after by Maria Louisa,"proud Austria's mournful flower," in a theatre,—and, in fine, he has swum across the Hellespont! He who has claims to have all this engraved on his tomb-stone, need not fear be coming soon a prey to "dumb forgetfulness."

The principle of chiaroscuro will account for much of the strong effect of his pieces. A sombre thought or image is introduced to give high relief to a lovely description: this is often done with too much show of design, - but it is also sometimes done with consummate skill and feeling, of which we have an instance in the following fine stanza.

1

We know nothing, in the whole range of poetry, more true to experience, and at the same time more original, than the thought glanced across the mind in the line we have distinguished by Italics. It gives voice to an impression which has many a day lain on many a heart, without the consciousness being sufficiently awakened to it to define it exactly. Again, on the other hand, how delightfully does he throw the beauty of silent ceaseless nature, over scenes of moral vicissitude, and historical melancholy!

in exhibition, but the exhibitor is evidently penetrated by their qualities; he anxiously adjusts the display, but he feels them to be worth displaying. His descriptions of scenery, and the exquisite effects of nature, are what we think he does best. The moon is up, and yet it is not nightSunset divides the sky with her-a sea Of glory streams along the Alpine height Of blue Friuli's mountains; Heaven is free From clouds, but of all colours seems to be Melted to one vast Iris of the West, Where the day joins the past eternity; While, on the other hand, meek Dian's

crest

ples gone:

Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares gray Marathon.

We have living poets-severalwhose contemplation is more intense, -whose passion is more exclusively poetical,-whose language is more pure, and expedients more select; but none whose spirit is so active, or range of sensibility so wide. He spreads himself out over nature and history, like a bird of prey; the storm does not beat down his wing, and he sails in the calm sunshine without fainting. The best specimens of poetry which the present day has produced, lie deep and clear like lakes: Byron's verse rushes like a mountain river through many realms; carrying down to one the productions of a nother;-often shallow, sometimes showing dry bald spots; but usually Tushing forwards with vehement impetuosity: sometimes, too, collecting into depths equal to that of the lake then again pouring onward, as if enlivened, excited, by the call of the roaring ocean.

Eloquence, rather than poetry, forms, perhaps, the great charm of Lord Byron's verses: like some of the loftier passages in Tasso, his finest morsels are generally declamatory;-the objects are all shown off

the blest.

Childe Harold, Canto 4.

After passages of this class, the bitterness of sceptical emotion in his compositions seems most marked by energy and earnestness. As a moral philosopher, and even as a misanthrope, he is childishly inconsistent; and his inconsistency would lead us to doubt, or more than doubt, his cherishing any real sentiment corresponding with his expressions in such passages. For instance, in stanza 176, of his fourth Canto of Childe Harold, he makes it his boast that he can

reap from earth, sea, joy almost as dear As if there were no man to trouble what is

clear.

This is very school-boy like; but, what is worse, it is not felt with the sincerity of the school-boy; for, in stanza 178, he tells us that he

Loves not man the less, but nature more, for these pleasures enjoyed in the "pathless woods," and "by the deep sea:

and then again, in stanza 180, we find him exulting in the idea, that his favourite, the ocean, is in the habit of sending human beings "shivering in its playful spray, and howling to their gods"-then dashing them to the earth," where let them lay!"-which last exclamation is bad grammar, and idle rhodomontade.We could multiply instances of these inconsistencies from all his composi tions.

His females are fair and pellucid formations, without distinct features, or definite properties. The female character is reduced in them to a certain intense power of communicating delight to man, and awaken

ing enthusiasm in his breast:-they love, dazzle, and die. Their model is altogether an Eastern one:

Where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine,

And all save the spirit of man is divine. Bride of Abydos.

They are houris, intended to gratify the pleasures of sense with celestial charms. They are made soft, and silent, and yielding, and devoted; just such blessed creatures as man might wish to form for himself to administer to his enjoyment, exempt from all partnership with him in the dominion of the world. Their looks fall on him like moon-light; their breath sighs in his ear, like the whisper of evening; their forms are delicate as the master-pieces of art; their hair is long and flowing for his fingers to play with; they live but in his countenance, and he adores them as the beauty and delight of his existence. But we must not look in Lord Byron's poetry for traces of that tenderness of soul, which has its depth in reason and will; that concession of self, which has its value in worth and weight of character; that full companionship, and closely and entirely associated sympathy, which give importance and solemnity to the union of the sexes, at the same time increasing its zest.

Haidee, in the Don Juan, is by much his best female portrait. Her tenderness seems connected with a greater range of feeling; it is marked by a nobility of sentiment, which is generally wanting to the fondness of Lord Byron's heroines. Perhaps the following stanza may be as proper as any to serve as a specimen of his particular manner in the description of women. Fair- -as the first that fell of womankindWhen on that dread yet lovely serpent smiling,

Whose image then was stamp'd upon her

mind

And, oh! that eye was in itself a Soul! Bride of Abydos, Canto I. It is but fair to say, however, that women are well adapted to his

men,

his and give a suitable grace to the pictures in which they are introduced. His heroes-the Giaour, Corsair, Alp the renegado, &c. cannot be said to have characters; they are placed in glaring lights; the circumstances around them are disposed for effect; they have certain strong natural instincts. They are brave, vindictive, unfortunate, and unyielding. They all love, fight, despair, and die. Manfred and Lara alone raise intellect above passion; and the poems, of which they are the heroes, are noble creations of a poetical mind.

But which of Lord Byron's is not? They all glow with the fire of genius;-their faults are to be reasoned about; their power is instantaneously felt. Our author is, in short, a genuine master in his art, though his style is false, and his resources are often unworthy of his talents.-We but if his poetry be bad, we can only have heard him called a bad poet; say, that we like it better than much that is allowed to be good. Who denies that Salvator Rosa was a genuine artist, because signs of affectation, and false ambition, are to be discerned in his pictures? Lord Byron's last compositions-Beppo and Don Juan-are wonderful proofs of the versatility of his powers; but they pitilessly sacrifice personal consistency and dignity in the caprice of a petulant disdain of opinion, or a distasteful avidity for notoriety as a man and an author.

tuation of the sun, and the earth's motion about it. Chaucer, in the most social of lines, has spoken

Of Sanison, Turnus, and of Socrates.

In Galileo's time, the two reigning authorities in all sciences, divine and human, were Aristotle and Moses. The demonstrations of the Copernican system, going counter to the astronomical opinions of the great logician of Greece and liberator of Judea, were thought so blasphemous by the friars, that the author was first ordered to renounce, and was afterwards imprisoned, for daring to renew them. His confinement lasted for more than a year and a half; and his book on the subject was burnt: finally, he was enjoined, for the space of three years, to return once a week to the Holy Office, and repeat the seven penitential Psalms. This is the way in which opinions equally innocent, would be treated now, if the greatest and most calumniated spirits in other times had not, at length, reduced envy and folly to a state of toothless clamour. Milton, then on his travels in Italy, visited his illustrious brother reformer, who was confined, he tells us, for thinking otherwise in astronomy than the Dominican friars. The interview

seems to have dwelt upon his imagination, for he afterwards put him in a well-known

passage of the Paradise Lost.

He scarce had ceased, when the superior Fiend

Was moving toward the shore, his ponder

ous shield,

Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
At evening from the top of Fesole,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,
Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe.

Galileo's country house was in Valdarno, and looked up at Fesole; to the top of which, he seems to have told Milton that he often transplanted his telescope. Perhaps our philosopher's heretical relapse was the more aggravating (as the old women say), in as much as he had an unconquerable gaiety and facetiousness. He is reported to have said, when he came out from his first sentence, "It's very true though, for all that." When he found out the telescope, a university professor undertook to make a retrospective discovery of it in Aristotle. It was in a passage where the reason is given why the stars are visible in the day time from a deep well. Galileo, who tells us the story himself, adds, in his pleasant way, that such men are like alchemists, who say that the art of making gold was evidently known to the ancients, by the deep fables and fictions under which they concealed it. Our phi

losopher was remarkable at all times for his vein of pleasantry. He wrote lively poetry, in the style of Berni, and was passionately fond of Ariosto. He was a scholar; wrote with great accuracy and clearness; could play the husbandman in the country; delighted in architecture and painting; designed well; and had an admirable finger on the lute. In his person he was small, but strong and well looking. During the three or four last years of his life he was blind; owing, it is said, to his constant use of his telescope, and the night air: but this calamity neither broke his spirit nor interrupted his studies, which he only turned the more inward, after the manner of his illustrious visitor. He died at Arcetri, near Florence, on the 8th of January, 1642. Galileo was married, and left a son who proved worthy of him.

The following is Mr. Hunt's account of Ariosto. We confess that we should have preferred a notice of Tasso, to one either of Petrarch or Ariosto, though we willingly accept the latter. The misfortunes of Tasso, however, are put on record both in verse and prose, and are perhaps bet ter known generally, than the biography of his brother poet, who

ARIOSTO. Lodovico Giovanni Ariosto, one of the most delightful spirits of the south, and the enchanter among Italian poets, was born September the 20th (8th, O.S. 1474,) at Reggio in Lombardy, where his father was Captain of the Citadel. He was left in his 26th year with slender means to take care of four brothers and five sisters; and it is not one of his least honours, that with the usual poetical tendency to enjoy himself, he took the most industrious and affectionate care of them all. He was at the famous battle of Ravenna in 1512, which he speaks of with such animation and pathos in the 14th Canto of the Orlando; and among other missions, was twice sent ambassador to Pope Julius the Second. But, though some biographers deny it, he is spoken of as a very indifferent and unwilling politician. However, he was politician enough, in the best part of the art, to restore to har mony the district of Grafagnana, to which the Duke of Ferrara sent him as Governor for that purpose. He was a good while in the service of that prince, and of others of the family of Este, whom he honoured with his panegyrics; but he had almost as little reason to thank that insolent and over. weening race, as Tasso after him. He was so arrogantly treated by Cardinal Hip