which it would not be easy to find many pa- | raised an inferior artist to the very summit of rallels. distinction. "The Convent bells are ringing! But mournfully and slow; In the grey square turret swinging, Hark! the hymn is singing! The song for the dead below, Or the living who shortly shall be so! [knoll: With the block before and the guards around- He bends to hear his accents bliss "The parting prayers are said and over The scarf which Parisina gave- Shall ne'er approach his haughty eye. Of the Hebrew melodies-the Ode to Napoleon, and some other smaller pieces that appeared about the same time, we shall not now stop to say anything. They are obviously inferior to the works we have been noticing, and are about to notice, both in general interest, and in power of poetry though some of them, and the Hebrew melodies especially, display a skill in versification, and a mastery in diction, which would have Of the verses entitled, "Fare thee well,"— and some others of a similar character, we shall say nothing but that, in spite of their beauty, it is painful to read them-and infinitely to be regretted that they should have been given to the public. It would be a piece of idle affectation to consider them as mere effusions of fancy, or to pretend ignorance of the subjects to which they relate-and with the knowledge which all the world has of these subjects, we must say, that not even the example of Lord Byron, himself, can persuade us that they are fit for public discussion. We come, therefore, to the consideration of the noble author's most recent publications. The most considerable of these, is the Third Canto of Childe Harold; a work which has the disadvantage of all continuations, in admitting of little absolute novelty in the plan of the work or the cast of its character, and must, besides, remind all Lord Byron's readers of the extraordinary effect produced by the sudden blazing forth of his genius, upon their first introduction to that title. In spite of all this, however, we are persuaded that this Third Part of the poem will not be pronounced inferior to either of the former; and, we think, will probably be ranked above them by those who have been most delighted with the whole. The great success of this singular production, indeed, has always appeared to us an extraor dinary proof of its merits; for, with all its genius, it does not belong to a sort of poetry that rises easily to popularity.-It has no story or action-very little variety of characterand a great deal of reasoning and reflection of no very attractive tenor. It is substantially a contemplative and ethical work, diversified with fine description, and adorned or overshaded by the perpetual presence of one emphatic person, who is sometimes the author, and sometimes the object, of the reflections on which the interest is chiefly rested. It required, no doubt, great force of writing, and a decided tone of originality to recommend a performance of this sort so powerfully as this has been recommended to public notice and admiration-and those high characteristics belong perhaps still more eminently to the part that is now before us, than to any of the former. There is the same stern and lofty disdain of mankind, and their ordinary pursuits and enjoyments; with the same bright gaze on nature, and the same magic power of giving interest and effect to her delineations-but mixed up, we think, with deeper and more matured reflections, and a more intense sensibility to all that is grand or lovely in the external world.-Harold, in short, is somewhat older since he last appeared upon the scene-and while the vigour of his intellect has been confirmed, and his confidence in his own opinions increased, his mind has also become more sensitive; and his misanthropy, thus softened over by habits of calmer contemplation, appears less active and impatient, even although more deeply rooted than before. Undoubtedly the finest parts of the poem before us, are those which thus embody the weight of his moral sentiments; or disclose the lofty sympathy which binds the despiser of Man to the glorious aspects of Nature. It is in these, we think, that the great attractions of the work consist, and the strength of the author's genius is seen. The narrative and mere description are of far inferior interest. With reference to the sentiments and opinions, however, which thus give its distinguishing character to the piece, we must say, that it seems no longer possible to ascribe them to the ideal person whose name it bears, or to any other than the author himself.Lord Byron, we think, has formerly complained of those who identified him with his hero, or supposed that Harold was but the expositor of his own feelings and opinions;-and in noticing the former portions of the work, we thought it unbecoming to give any countenance to such a supposition. In this last part, however, it is really impracticable to distinguish them.-Not only do the author and his hero travel and reflect together, but, in truth, we scarcely ever have any distinct intimation to which of them the sentiments so energetically expressed are to be ascribed; and in those which are unequivocally given as those of the noble author himself, there is the very same tone of misanthropy, sadness, and scorn, which we were formerly willing to regard as a part of the assumed costume of the Childe. We are far from supposing, indeed, that Lord Byron would disavow any of these sentiments; and though there are some which we must ever think it most unfortunate to entertain, and others which it appears improper to have published, the greater part are admirable, and cannot be perused without emotion, even by those to whom they may appear erroneous. The poem opens with a burst of grand poetry, and lofty and impetuous feeling, in which the author speaks undisguisedly in his own person. "Once more upon the waters! yet once more! Though the strain'd mast should quiver as a reed, Flung from the rock, on Ocean's foam, to sail Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath prevail. "In my youth's summer, I did sing of One, appears. "Since my young days of passion-joy, or pain, After a good deal more in the same strain, he proceeds, "Yet must I think less wildly :-I have thought The character and feelings of this unjoyous personage are then depicted with great force and fondness;-and at last he is placed upon the plain of Waterloo. "In pride of place' where late the Eagle flew, "If not, o'er one fall'n despot boast no more!" There can be no more remarkable proof of the greatness of Lord Byron's genius than the spirit and interest he has contrived to comdifficult scene of the breaking up from Brusmunicate to his picture of the often-drawn and sels before the great battle. It is a trite remark, that poets generally fail in the representation of great events, when the interest is recent, and the particulars are consequently clearly and commonly known: and the reason is obvious: For as it is the object of poetry to make us feel for distant or imaginary occur rences nearly as strongly as if they were present and real, it is plain that there is no scope for her enchantments, where the impressive reality, with all its vast preponderance of interest, is already before us, and where the concern we take in the gazette far outgoes any emotion that can be conjured up in us by the help of fine descriptions. It is natural, however, for the sensitive tribe of poets, to mistake the common interest which they then share with the unpoetical part of their coun trymen, for a vocation to versify; and so they proceed to pour out the lukewarm distillations of their phantasies upon the unchecked effervescence of public feeling! All our bards, accordingly, great and small, and of all sexes, ages, and professions, from Scott and Southey down to hundreds without names or additions, have adventured upon this theme-and failed in the management of it! And while they yielded to the patriotic impulse, as if they all caught the inspiring summons had ject which probably was thought, of itself, a secure passport to immortality. It required some courage to venture on a theme beset with so many dangers, and deformed with the wrecks of so many former adventurers;—and a theme, too, which, in its general conception, appeared alien to the prevailing tone of Lord Byron's poetry. See, however, with what easy strength he enters upon it, and with how much grace he gradually finds his way back to his own peculiar vein of sentiment and diction. "There was a sound of revelry by night; And Belgium's capital had gather'd then Her beauty and her chivalry; and bright The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men. A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry as a marriage bell; But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!" "Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro, If ever more should meet those mutual eyes, Since upon nights so sweet such awful morn could rise ? "And there was mounting in hot haste: the steed, "And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves, the Dewy with Nature's tear-drops, as they pass! Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves, Over the unreturning brave,-alas! Ere evening to be trodden like the grass Which now beneath them, but above shall grow In its next verdure! when this fiery mass Of living valour, rolling on the foe [and low." And burning with high hope, shall moulder cold After some brief commemoration of the worth and valour that fell in that bloody field, the author turns to the many hopeless mourners that survive to lament their extinction; many broken-hearted families, whose incurable sorrow is enhanced by the national exultation that still points, with importunate joy, to the scene of their destruction. There is a richness and energy in the following passage which is peculiar to Lord Byron, among all modern poets,- -a throng of glowing images, poured forth at once, with a facility and profusion which must appear mere wastefulness to more economical writers, and a certain negligence and harshness of diction, which can belong only to an author who is oppressed with the exuberance and rapidity of his conceptions. "The Archangel's trump, not Glory's, must awake Those whom they thirst for though the sound of Fame May for a moment soothe, it cannot slake The fever of vain longing; and the name So honour'd but assumes a stronger, bitterer claim. 46 They mourn, but smile at length; and, smiling, And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on: The same, and still the more, the more it breaks; There is next an apostrophe to Napoleon, graduating into a series of general reflections, expressed with infinite beauty and earnestness, and illustrated by another cluster of magical images;-but breathing the very essence of misanthropical disdain, and embodying opinions which we conceive not to be less erroneous than revolting. After noticing the which seemed to form the character of that strange combination of grandeur and littleness greatest of all captains and conquerors, the author proceeds, "Yet well thy soul hath brook'd the turning tide When the whole host of hatred stood hard by, This makes the madmen, who have made men By their contagion; Conquerors and Kings, [mad Founders of sects and systems,-to whom add Sophists, Bards, Statesmen, all unquiet things, Which stir too strongly the soul's secret springs, And are themselves the fools to those they fool; Envied, yet how unenviable! what stings Are theirs! One breast laid open were a school Which would unteach mankind the lust to shine or rule: Their breath is agitation; and their life, POETRY. He who ascends to mountain-tops, shall find The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow; held the secondary shares of it. Men of truly genius has only been levied from those who He who surpasses or subdues mankind, Must look down on the hate of those below. Though high above the sun of glory glow, great powers of mind have generally been And far beneath the earth and ocean spread, cheerful, social, and indulgent; while a tenRound him are icy rocks; and loudly blow dency to sentimental whining, or fierce intol Contending tempests on his naked head, [led." symptoms of little souls and inferior intel erance, may be ranked among the surest And thus reward the toils which to those summits lects. In the whole list of our English poets, This is splendidly written, no doubt-but we can only remember Shenstone and Savage we trust it is not true; and as it is delivered two, certainly, of the lowest-who were with much more than poetical earnestness, querulous and discontented. Cowley, indeed, and recurs, indeed, in other forms in various used to call himself melancholy;-but he was parts of the volume, we must really be allowed not in earnest; and, at any rate, was full of to enter our dissent somewhat at large. With conceits and affectations; and has nothing to regard to conquerors, we wish with all our make us proud of him. Shakespeare, the hearts that the case were as the noble author greatest of them all, was evidently of a free represents it: but we greatly fear they are and joyous temperament ;-and so was Chauneither half so unhappy, nor half so much cer, their common master. The same dis hated as they should be. On the contrary, it position appears to have predominated in seems plain enough that they are very com- Fletcher, Jonson, and their great contempomonly idolised and admired, even by those raries. The genius of Milton partook someon whom they trample; and we suspect, thing of the austerity of the party to which he moreover, that in general they actually pass belonged, and of the controversies in which their time rather agreeably, and derive con- he was involved; but even when fallen on siderable satisfaction from the ruin and deso-evil days and evil tongues, bis spirit seems to lation of the world. From Macedonia's madman to the Swede-from Nimrod to Bonaparte, the hunters of men have pursued their sport with as much gaiety, and as little remorse, as the hunters of other animals-and have lived as cheerily in their days of action, and as comfortably in their repose, as the followers of better pursuits. For this, and for the fame which they have generally enjoyed, they are obviously indebted to the great interests connected with their employment, and the mental excitement which belongs to its hopes and hazards. It would be strange, therefore, if the other active, but more innocent spirits, whom Lord Byron has here placed in the same predicament, and who share all their sources of enjoyment, without the guilt and the hardness which they cannot fail of contracting, should be more miserable or more unfriended than those splendid curses of their kind:-And it would be passing strange, and pitiful, if the most precious gifts of Providence should produce only unhappiness, and mankind regard with hostility their greatest benefactors. We do not believe in any such prodigies. Great vanity and ambition may indeed lead to feverish and restless efforts-to jealousies, to hate, and to mortification-but these are only their effects when united to inferior abilities. It is not those, in short, who actually surpass mankind, that are unhappy; but those who struggle in vain to surpass them: And this moody temper, which eats into itself from within, and provokes fair and unfair opposition from without, is generally the result of pretensions which outgo the merits by which they are supported-and disappointments, that may be clearly traced, not to the excess of genius, but its defect. It will be found, we believe, accordingly, that the master spirits of their age have always escaped the unhappiness which is here supposed to be the inevitable lot of extraordinary talents; and that this strange tax upon have retained its serenity as well as its dig. nity; and in his private life, as well as in his poetry, the majesty of a high character is tempered with great sweetness, genial indulgences, and practical wisdom. In the succeeding age our poets were but too gay; and though we forbear to speak of living authors, we know enough of them to say with confidence, that to be miserable or to be hated is mon lot of those who excel. not now, any more than heretofore, the com confessedly the most irritable and fantastic If this, however, be the case with poets, of all men of genius-and of poets, too, bred and born in the gloomy climate of England, it is not likely that those who have surpassed their fellows in other ways, or in other regions, have been more distinguished for unhappiness. Were Socrates and Plato, the greatest philosophers of antiquity, remarkable for unsocial or gloomy tempers?—was Bacon, the greatest in modern times?-was Sir Thomas Moreor Erasmus-or Hume-or Voltaire ?—was Newton-or Fenelon ?-was Francis I., or ors?-was Fox, the most ardent, and, in the Henry IV., the paragon of kings and conquervulgar sense, the least successful of statesmen? These, and men like these, are undoubtedly the lights and the boast of the world. Yet there was no alloy of misanthropy or gloom in their genius. They did not disdain the men they had surpassed; and neither feared nor experienced their hostility. Some detractors they might have, from envy or misapprehension; but, beyond all doubt, the prevailing sentiments in respect to them have always been those of gratitude and admiration; and the error of public judgment, where it has erred, has much oftener been to those who had claims on their good opinion. overrate than to undervalue the merits of On the whole, we are far from thinking that eminent men are actually happier than those who glide through life in peaceful obscurity: But it is their eminence, and the consequences of it, rather than the mental superiority by which it is obtained, that interferes with their enjoyment. Distinction, however won, usually leads to a passion for more distinction; and is apt to engage us in laborious efforts and anxious undertakings: and those, even when successful, seldom repay, in our judgment at least, the ease, the leisure, and tranquillity, of which they require the sacrifice but it really passes our imagination to conceive, that the very highest degrees of intellectual vigour, or fancy, or sensibility, should of themselves be productive either of unhappiness or general dislike. Harold and his poet next move along the lovely banks of the Rhine, to which, and all their associated emotions, due honour is paid in various powerful stanzas. We pass on, however, to the still more attractive scenes of Switzerland. The opening is of suitable grandeur. "But these recede. Above me are the Alps, How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below." On this magnificent threshold, the poet pauses, to honour the patriot field of Morat, and the shrine of the priestess of Aventicum; and then, in congratulating himself on his solitude, once more moralises his song with something of an apology for its more bitter misanthropies. "To fly from, need not be to hate mankind; "The race of life becomes a hopeless flight And love Earth only for its earthly sake? The cliffs of Meillerie, and the groves of Clarens of course, conjure up the shade of Rousseau; whom he characterises very strongly, but charitably, in several enchanting stanzas;-one or two of which we shall cite as a specimen of the kindred rapture with which the Poet here honours the Apostle of Love. "His love was passion's essence! As a tree In him existence, and o'erflowing teems [seems. Along his burning page, distemper'd though it This breath'd itself to life in Julie, this Invested her with all that's wild and sweet," &c. "Clarens! sweet Clarens, birth-place of deep Love! Thine air is the young breath of passionate thought! Thy trees take root in Love; the snows above Which stir and sting the soul with hope that woos, then mocks. "All things are here of him; from the black pines, Which are his shade on high, and the loud roar Of torrents, where he listeneth, to the vines Which slope his green path downward to the shore, Where the bow'd waters meet him, and adore, Kissing his feet with murmurs; and the wood, The covert of old trees, with trunks all hoar, But light leaves, young as joy, stands where it stood, Offering to him and his, a populous solitude." Our readers may think, perhaps, that there is too much sentiment and reflection in these extracts; and wish for the relief of a little narrative or description: but the truth is, that the descriptions are blended with the expresthere is no narrative in the poem, and that all sion of deep emotion. The following picture, however, of an evening calm on the lake of Geneva, we think, must please even the lovers of pure description Tmargin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear, Menewd and angling yet distinctly seen, Save darken'd Jura, ose capt heights appear Precipitously steep! and drawing near, There breathes a living fragrance from the shore, Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear Drops the light drip of the suspended oar, [more! Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol At intervals, some bird from out the brakes, Starts into voice a moment, then is still. There seems a floating whisper on the hill; But that is fancy!-for the starlight dews All silently their tears of love instil, |