chief, ing enthusiasm in his breast:-they Was she-the daughter of that rude old 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 womankind— When on that dread yet lovely serpent smiling, Whose image then was stamp'd upon her mind Who met the maid with tears-but not of grief. Who hath not proved-how feebly words The light of love the purity of graceThe mind-the music breathing from her face! The heart whose softness harmonized the whole And, oh! that eye was in itself a Soul ! Bride of Abydos, Canto 1. It is but fair to say, however, that his women are well adapted to his men, 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 have heard him called a bad poet; but if his poetry be bad, we can only 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. THE LITERARY POCKET-BOOK, OR, COMPANION FOR THE LOVER OF NATURE and art. A POCKET-BOOK is, beyond all Strive here for mastery, and to battle bring And now, lastly, and, beyond all com- pocket-books; and it possesses really valuable lists of authors, and scientific men, in most quarters of the civilized world; thus yielding literary information which cannot be obtained in any other work whatever. It is time, however, to go somewhat into detail, and to give our readers a few specimens of what the Literary Pocket-Book contains. It commences with a "Calendar of Birth-days;" or, in other words, sketches of some eminent men whose personal as well as intellectual characters, render their anniversaries more particularly worthy of observ→ ance. This "Calendar of Birthdays" is an interesting essay (or rather collection of essays), and is for the most part delightfully written. It is the composition, we have heard, of Mr. Leigh Hunt, and it certainly strongly resembles the style adopted by that gentleman in his little weekly paper called the "Indicator." The eminent men of whom Mr. Hunt has given us such pleasant sketches, are, Epicurus, Montesquieu, Bacon, Galileo, Raphael, Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, La Fontaine, Petrarch, Ariosto, Virgil, Bayle, and Horace. select the following account of Galileo ("the starry Galileo,”) not be cause it is the best, but because it is one of the shortest. We might otherwise have quoted the sketch of Raphael, or of La Fontaine, which are more elaborated. March. We GALILEO.-Galileo Galilei, who united accomplishments with science, in a manner far from usual with philosophers of his class, was born either at Florence or Pisa, on the 3d of March, (19th Feb. O. S.) 1564. He was the son, some say the natural son, of Vincenzo Galileo, a noble Florentine remarkable for his knowledge of music. Our philosopher made several fine inventions, particularly the telescope, the cycloid in geometry, and the machine by which the Venetians render their Lagune fluid and navigable. He discovered with his new instrument four of Jupiter's Satellites, and the varieties in the surface of the moon. He also confirmed the Copernican system relative to the centrical si 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 Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views 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 pas sionately 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 better 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 harmony 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 overweening race, as Tasso after him. was so arrogantly treated by Cardinal Hip. He polito for declining to accompany him to Hungary, where the climate was unfavourable to his health and time of life, that what with this and other ill returns for the delight he was giving mankind, he took for his device a bee-hive set on fire for its honey, with the motto "Evil for Good." But the natural cheerfulness of his temper was a wealth of which nothing deprived him. Next to writing his poetry, he took delight in gardening and building He was plain and temperate in diet, but a most delightful companion, particularly in the society of the ladies, by whom he was proportionately beloved. The name of his favourite was Gineura. He was so attached to her, that in one of his sonnets he wishes to be known for a poet, not by a wreath of ivy or laurel, but by a crown of Juniper,Gineura, in Italian, resembling the word that signifies that tree. He was handsome both in face and person, though he latterly grew large like Boccaccio. His poetry (of which it is needless perhaps to inform our readers, that the translations give no idea) is exquisitely easy, natural, and full of a certain humanity in its wildest departures from it. He makes you feel a knight on horseback, and a magician on griffin-back, with an equal sense of reality; and carries you from story to story, and bower to bower, with a never-ending freshness and variety. But we must kill him, or we shall never have done. He died on the 18th June, (6th, O. S.) 1533. Following the "Calendar of Birthdays," is a" Diary" for appointments, and other memoranda, together with blank pages for general observations. This Diary differs in nothing from the common Diaries, except that wherever the birth-day of a celebrated man occurs, his name is put down, with the year in which he was born, thus reminding us pleasantly of great spirits, and affording us an opportunity of doing them honour. than most of the others about town. It is bordered on one side by tall elms and undulating fields, and on the other by a fine series of meadows which still preserve their old character of simple open pasturage. Just before we reach Kilburn we shall he tempted to stop and look through an opening on the right into a complete landscape, cultivated and graceful in its effect without formality. The fields nearest to us seem to have burst into soft irregularities, as though the earth had made faint preludings to itself before it knew how to throw up the mountains. These hillocks mark the fore-ground; the middle distance is studded with trees and hedges, and the picture is shut in by peaceful hills. Passing through Kilburn, we continue in the same beautiful road for about half a mile, when we turn into a lane to the left, leading to Wilsden. Here we are perfectly retired and quiet, and may be as meditative as we please. The lane partakes of the unmodernized character of the whole neighbourhood: it is edged by strips of grass, and made especially picturesque by the capricious outline of its rich hedges, whose bases are embossed by large-leaved weeds and wild flowers breeding there in secure overgrowth. In this still situation, we shall soon come upon the gates of a mansion standing in the midst of spacious grounds, and having very much the look of an old chateau in a romance. Looking beyond the groups of graceful shrubs which are scattered about on this side the house, our view is bounded by deep groves and glades of large trees, nursing their own twilight. An hundred miles from town, in our opinion, we could not meet with any place more hushed and hidden, where the air could be freer, or the trees more solemn Bramsbury, and is the seat of Mr. Coutts and umbrageous. The house is called Trotter. The following Song, and Fragment entitled "Grief," are the production of Mr. Shelley, the author of that most powerful dramatic work The Cenci. paper The "Miscellanies" consist of a very clever and interesting called "Walks round London ;" and various pieces of original poetry. From the Walks we select the following, (which is all that we can spare room for)-it takes us at once into the country, and is undoubtedly a very picturesque piece of writing. We understand that it is written by Mr., but perhaps he does not wish us to mention his name. We propose, then, to take a direction to the north-west of the great city, along the Edgeware-road, which becomes interesting Boon after you have passed through Paddington, the road being less frequented SONG. On a faded Violet. Which like thy kisses breathed on me; Which glowed of thee and only thee! It lies on my abandoned breast, I weep,-my tears revive it not! I sigh,-it breathes no more on me! GRIEF. A Fragment. The lady died not, nor grew wild, But year by year lived on: in truth, I think, Her gentleness and patience and sad smiles, The following, which is part of a poem entitled "Ull's Water and its Echoes," comes from the pen of Mr. Woven by some subtlest bard, to make Barry Cornwall, who, it seems, hard hearts Dissolve away in wisdom-working grief. Her eyes were black and lustreless and wan: Her eyelashes were worn away with tears: Her lips and cheeks were like things dead -so pale! Her hands were thin, and through their wandering veins And weak articulations, might be seen A. The song called "My Nanie O" is written by Mr. Allan Cunningham, the author of "the Nithsdale and Galloway songs." He is certainly the best writer of songs which Scotland has produced, with the exception-(we are sure he will allow the exception), of Burns. There is great naïveté and beauty in the lines which we have put in Italics. MY NANIE O. Red rolls the Nith 'tween bank and brae, Mirk is the night and rainie O; Though heaven and earth should mix in storm, I'll go and see my Nanie O. My Nanie Ó, my Nanie O, My kind and winsome Nanie O; She holds my heart in love's sweet bands, And nane can do't but Nanie O. In preaching time so meek she stands, I cannot get one glimpse of grace, My Nanie O, my Nanie O, My breast can scarce contain my heart, My Nanie O, my Nanie O, The pride of Nithsdale's Nanie O; Love looks frae 'neath her golden hair, And says "I live with Nanie O." Tell not, thou star, at gray day-light, has been lately among the lakes and mountains of Cumberland. |