The charge we bring against Lord Byron, in short, is, that his writings have a tendency to destroy all belief in the reality of virtue

sure they will pass with no other person.-even of Don Juan, so offensively degrading as They are so manifestly inconsistent, as mutu- Tom Jones' affair with Lady Bellaston. It ally to destroy each other-and so weak, as is no doubt a wretched apology for the indeto be quite insufficient to account for the fact, cencies of a man of genius, that equal inde even if they could be effectually combined cencies have been forgiven to his predeces for that purpose. The party that Lord Byron sors: But the precedent of lenity might have has chiefly offended, bears no malice to Lords been followed; and we might have passed and Gentlemen. Against its rancour, on the both the levity and the voluptuousness-the contrary, these qualities have undoubtedly dangerous warmth of his romantic situations, been his best protection; and had it not been and the scandal of his cold-blooded dissipa for them, he may be assured that he would, tion. It might not have been so easy to get long ere now, have been shown up in the over his dogmatic scepticism-his hard-heartpages of the Quarterly, with the same candoured maxims of misanthropy-his cold-blooded and liberality that has there been exercised and eager expositions of the non-existence of towards his friend Lady Morgan. That the virtue and honour. Even this, however, might base and the bigoted those whom he has have been comparatively harmless, if it had darkened by his glory, spited by his talent, not been accompanied by that which may or mortified by his neglect-have taken ad- look, at first sight, as a palliation-the frequent vantage of the prevailing disaffection, to vent presentment of the most touching pictures of their puny malice in silly nicknames and vul- tenderness, generosity, and faith. gar scurrility, is natural and true. But Lord Byron may depend upon it, that the dissatisfaction is not confined to them-and, indeed, that they would never have had the courage to assail one so immeasurably their superior, if he had not at once made himself vulnerable by his errors, and alienated his natural defenders by his obstinate adherence to them. We are not bigots or rival poets. We have not been detractors from Lord Byron's fame, nor the friends of his detractors; and we tell him-far more in sorrow than in anger-that we verily believe the great body of the English nation-the religious, the moral, and the candid part of it-consider the tendency of his writings to be immoral and pernicious and look upon his perseverance in that strain of composition with regret and reprehension. He has no priestlike cant or priestlike reviling to apprehend from us. We do not charge him with being either a disciple or an apostle of Satan; nor do we describe his poetry as a mere compound of blasphemy and obscenity. On the contrary, we are inclined to believe that he wishes well to the happiness of mankind-and are glad to testify, that his poems abound with sentiments of great dignity and tenderness, as well as passages of infinite sublimity and beauty. But their general tendency we believe to be in the highest degree pernicious; and we even think that it is chiefly by means of the fine and lofty sentiments they contain, that they acquire their most fatal power of corruption. This may sound at first, perhaps, like a paradox; but we are mistaken if we shall not make it intelligible enough in the end.

We think there are indecencies and indelicacies, seductive descriptions and profligate representations, which are extremely reprehensible; and also audacious speculations, and erroneous and uncharitable assertions, equally indefensible. But if these had stood alone, and if the whole body of his works had been made up of gaudy ribaldry and flashy scepticism, the mischief, we think, would have been much less than it is. He is not more obscene, perhaps, than Dryden or Prior, and other classical and pardoned writers nor is there any passage in the history

and to make all enthusiasm and constancy of affection ridiculous; and this, not so much by direct maxims and examples, of an imposing or seducing kind, as by the constant exhibition of the most profligate heartlessness in the persons who had been transiently represented as actuated by the purest and most exalted emotions—and in the lessons of that very teacher who had been, but a moment before, so beautifully pathetic in the expression of the loftiest conceptions. When a gay voluptuary descants, somewhat too freely, on the intoxications of love and wine, we ascribe his excesses to the effervescence of youthful spirits, and do not consider him as seriously impeaching either the value or the reality of the severer virtues; and in the same way, when the satirist deals out his sarcasms against the sincerity of human professions, and unmasks the secret infirmities of our bosoms, we consider this as aimed at hypocrisy, and not at mankind: or, at all events, and in either case, we consider the Sensualist and the Misanthrope as wandering, each in his own delusion-and are contented to pity those who have never known the charms of a tender or generous affection.The true antidote to such seductive or revolting views of human nature, is to turn to the scenes of its nobleness and attraction; and to reconcile ourselves again to our kind, by listening to the accents of pure affection and incorruptible honour. But if those accents have flowed in all their sweetness, from the very lips that instantly open again to mock and blaspheme them, the antidote is mingled with the poison, and the draught is the more deadly for the mixture!

The reveller may pursue his orgies, and the wanton display her enchantments, with com parative safety to those around them), as long as they know or believe that there are purer and higher enjoyments, and teachers and followers of a happier way. But if the Priest pass from the altar, with persuasive exhortations to peace and purity still trembling on his tongue, to join familiarly in the grossest and most pro

fone debauchery-if the Matron, who has
charmed all hearts by the lovely sanctimo-
nies of her conjugal and maternal endear-
ments, glides out from the circle of her chil-
dren, and gives bold and shameless way to
the most abandoned and degrading vices-
our notions of right and wrong are at once
confounded our confidence in virtue shaken
to the foundation-and our reliance on truth
and fidelity at an end for ever.

compassion were fit only to be laughed at. In the same spirit, the glorious Ode on the aspirations of Greece after Liberty, is instantly followed up by a strain of dull and coldblooded ribaldry-and we are hurried on from the distraction and death of Haidee to merry scenes of intrigue and masquerading in the seraglio. Thus all good feelings are excited only to accustom us to their speedy and complete extinction; and we are brought back, from their transient and theatrical exhibition, to the staple and substantial doctrine of the work-the non-existence of constancy in women or honour in men, and the folly of expecting to meet with any such virtues, or of cultivating them, for an undeserving world; and all this mixed up with so much wit and cleverness, and knowledge of human nature, as to make it irresistibly pleasant and plausible-while there is not only no antidote supplied, but every thing that might have operated in that way has been anticipated, and presented already in as strong and engaging a form as possible-but under such associations as to rob it of all efficacy, or even turn it into an auxiliary of the poison.

This is the charge which we bring against Lord Byron. We say that, under some strange misapprehension as to the truth, and the duty of proclaiming it, he has exerted all the powers of his powerful mind to convince his readers, both directly and indirectly, that all ennobling pursuits, and disinterested virtues, are mere deceits or illusions-hollow and despicable mockeries for the most part, and, at best, but laborious follies. Religion, love, patriotism, valour, devotion, constancy, ambition-all are to be laughed at, disbelieved in, and despised!-and nothing is really good, so far as we can gather, but a succession of dangers to stir the blood, and of banquets and intrigues to soothe it again! If this doctrine stood alone, with its examples, it would revolt, we believe This is our sincere opinion of much of Lord more than it would seduce:-But the author Byron's most splendid poetry-a little exaggeof it has the unlucky gift of personating all rated perhaps in the expression, from a desire those sweet and lofty illusions, and that with to make our exposition clear and impressive such grace and force, and truth to nature, that-but, in substance, we think merited and it is impossible not to suppose, for the time, that he is among the most devoted of their votariestill he casts off the character with a jerk-and, the moment after he has moved and exalted us to the very height of our conception, resumes his mockery at all things serious or sublime and lets us down at once on some coarse joke, hard-hearted sarcasm, or fierce and relentless personality as if on purpose to show

"Whoe'er was edified, himself was not ""

correct. We have already said, and we deliberately repeat, that we have no notion that Lord Byron had any mischievous intention in these publications and readily acquit him of any wish to corrupt the morals or impair the happiness of his readers. Such a wish, indeed, is in itself altogether inconceivable; but it is our duty, nevertheless, to say, that much of what he has published appears to us to have this tendency and that we are acquainted with no writings so well calculated to extinguish in young minds all generous enthusiasm and gentle affection-all respect for themselves, and all love for their kind—to make them practise and profess hardily what it teaches them to suspect in others-and actually to persuade them that it is wise and manly and knowing to laugh, not only at selfdenial and restraint, but at all aspiring ambition, and all warm and constant affection.

or to demonstrate practically as it were, and
by example, how possible it is to have all fine
and noble feelings, or their appearance, for a
moment, and yet retain no particle of respect
for them-or of belief in their intrinsic worth
or permanent reality. Thus, we have an in-
delicate but very clever scene of young Juan's
concealment in the bed of an amorous matron,
and of the torrent of "rattling and audacious
eloquence" with which she repels the too How opposite to this is the system, or the
just suspicions of her jealous lord. All this temper, of the great author of Waverley-the
is merely comic, and a little coarse:-But only living individual to whom Lord Byron
then the poet chooses to make this shameless must submit to be ranked as inferior in genius
and abandoned woman address to her young-and still more deplorably inferior in all that
gallant an epistle breathing the very spirit of
warm, devoted, pure, and unalterable love
thus profaning the holiest language of the
heart, and indirectly associating it with the
most hateful and degrading sensuality. In
like manner, the sublime and terrific descrip-
tion of the Shipwreck is strangely and dís-
gustingly broken by traits of low humour and
buffoonery; and we pass immediately from
the moans of an agonising father fainting over
his famished son, to facetious stories of Juan's
begging a paw of his father's dog-and re-
fusing a slice of his tutor!-as if it were a
fine thing to be hard-hearted-and pity and

49

makes genius either amiable in itself, or useful to society! With all his unrivalled power of invention and judgment, of pathos and pleasantry, the tenor of his sentiments is uniformly generous, indulgent, and goodhumoured; and so remote from the bitterness of misanthropy, that he never indulges in sarcasm, and scarcely, in any case, carries his merriment so far as derision. But the peculiarity by which he stands most broadly and proudly distinguished from Lord Byron is, that, beginning as he frequently does, with some ludicrous or satirical theme, he never fails to raise out of it some feelinge of a gener

2 c2

ous or gentle kind, and to end by exciting our tender pity, or deep respect, for those very individuals or classes of persons who seemed at first to be brought on the stage for our mere sport and amusement-thus making the ludicrous itself subservient to the cause of benevolence and inculcating, at every turn, and as the true end and result of all his trials and experiments, the love of our kind, and the duty and delight of a cordial and genuine sympathy with the joys and sorrows of every condition of men. It seems to be Lord Byron's way, on the contrary, never to excite a kind or a noble sentiment, without making haste to obliterate it by a torrent of unfeeling mockery or relentless abuse, and taking pains to show how well those passing fantasies may be reconciled to a system of resolute misanthropy,

or so managed as even to enhance its inerite
or confirm its truth. With what different sen
sations, accordingly, do we read the works of
those two great writers!-With the one, we
seem to share a gay and gorgeous banquet-
with the other, a wild and dangerous intoxi-
cation. Let Lord Byron bethink him of this
contrast-and its causes and effects. Though
he scorns the precepts, and defies the censure
of ordinary men, he may yet be moved by the
example of his only superior!-In the mean
time, we have endeavoured to point out the
canker that stains the splendid flowers of his
poetry-or, rather, the serpent that lurks be-
neath them. If it will not listen to the voice
of the charmer, that brilliant garden, gay and
glorious as it is, must be deserted, and its
existence deplored, as a snare to the unwary.

(August, 1817.)

Manfred; a Dramatic Poem. By Lord BYRON. 8vo. pp. 75. London: 1811.

THIS is a very strange-not a very pleasing | ings,-but he treats them with gentleness and -but unquestionably a very powerful and pity; and, except when stung to impatience most poetical production. The noble author, by too importunate an intrusion, is kind and we find, still deals with that dark and over- considerate of the comforts of all around him. awing Spirit, by whose aid he has so often This piece is properly entitled a Dramatic subdued the minds of his readers, and in Poem-for it is merely poetical, and is not at whose might he has wrought so many won-all a drama or play in the modern acceptation ders. In Manfred, we recognise at once the of the term. It has no action; no plot-and gloom and potency of that soul which burned no characters; Manfred merely muses and and blasted and fed upon itself in Harold, and suffers from the beginning to the end. His Conrad, and Lara-and which comes again in distresses are the same at the opening of the this piece, more in sorrow than in anger- scene and at its closing-and the temper in more proud, perhaps, and more awful than which they are borne is the same. A hunter ever-but with the fiercer traits of its misan- and a priest, and some domestics, are indeed thropy subdued, as it were, and quenched in introduced; but they have no connection with the gloom of a deeper despondency. Man- the passions or sufferings on which the interfred does not, like Conrad and Lara, wreak est depends; and Manfred is substantially the anguish of his burning heart in the dan-alone throughout the whole piece. He holds gers and daring of desperate and predatory no communion but with the memory of the war-nor seek to drown bitter thoughts in the Being he had loved; and the immortal Spirits tumult of perpetual contention-nor yet, like whom he evokes to reproach with his misery, Harold, does he sweep over the peopled scenes and their inability to relieve it. These unof the earth with high disdain and aversion, earthly beings approach nearer to the characand make his survey of the business and ter of persons of the drama-but still they pleasures and studies of man an occasion for are but choral accompaniments to the pertaunts and sarcasms, and the food of an im- formance; and Manfred is, in reality, the only measurable spleen. He is fixed by the genius actor and sufferer on the scene. To delineate of the poet in the majestic solitudes of the his character indeed—to render conceivable central Alps-where, from his youth up, he his feelings-is plainly the whole scope and has lived in proud but calm seclusion from design of the poem; and the conception and the ways of men; conversing only with the execution are, in this respect, equally admirmagnificent forms and aspects of nature by able. It is a grand and terrific vision of a which he is surrounded, and with the Spirits being invested with superhuman attributes, of the Elements over whom he has acquired in order that he may be capable of more than dominion, by the secret and unhallowed stu- human sufferings, and be sustained under dies of Sorcery and Magic. He is averse them by more than human force and pride. indeed from mankind, and scorns the low and To object to the improbability of the fiction frivolous nature to which he belongs; but he is, we think, to mistake the end and aim of cherishes no animosity or hostility to that the author. Probabilities, we apprehend, did feeble race. Their concerns excite no inter- not enter at all into his consideration-his est-their pursuits no sympathy-their joys object was, to produce effect-to exalt and no envy. It is irksome and vexatious for him dilate the character through whom he was to to be crossed by them in his melancholy mus-interest or appal us-and to raise our concep

Nor flattering throb, that beats with hopes of
wishes,

Or lurking love of something on the earth.-
Now to my task."-pp. 7, 8.

When his evocation is completed, a star is seen at the far end of a gallery, and celestial voices are heard reciting a great deal of poetry. After they have answered that the gift of oblivion is not at their disposal, and intimated that death itself could not bestow it on him, they ask if he has any further demand to make of them. He answers,

tion of it, by all the helps that could be derived from the majesty of nature, or the dread of perstition. It is enough, therefore, if the situation in which he has placed him is conceivable-and if the supposition of its reality enhances our emotions and kindles our imagination;-for it is Manfred only that we are required to fear, to pity, or admire. If we can once conceive of him as a real existence, and enter into the depth and the height of his pride and his sorrows, we may deal as we please with the means that have been used to furnish us with this impression, or to enable us to attain to this conception. We may re-I gard them but as types, or metaphors, or allegories: But he is the thing to be expressed; and the feeling and the intellect, of which all these are but shadows.

"No, none: yet stay!-one moment, ere we would behold ye face to face. I hear [part→→→ Your voices, sweet and melancholy sounds As music on the waters; and I see The steady aspect of a clear large star; But nothing more. Approach me as ye are, Or one, or all, in your accustom'd forms. The events, such as they are, upon which Spirit. We have no forms beyond the elements the piece may be said to turn, have all taken Of which we are the mind and principle: place long before its opening, and are but But choose a form-in that we will appear. dimly shadowed out in the casual communicaMan. I have no choice; there is no form on earth tions of the agonising being to whom they Who is most powerful of ye, take such aspect Hideous or beautiful to me. Let him relate. Nobly born and trained in the castle As unto him may seem most fitting.-Come! of his ancestors, he had very soon sequestered Seventh Spirit. (Appearing in the shape of a himself from the society of men; and, after beautiful female figure.) Behold! running through the common circle of human M. Oh God! if it be thus, and thou sciences, had dedicated himself to the worship Art not a madness and a mockery, of the wild magnificence of nature, and to And we again will beI yet might be most happy.-I will clasp thee, those forbidden studies by which he had [The figure vanishes. learned to command its presiding powers.My heart is crush'd! [MANFRED falls senseless."-pp. 15, 16. One companion, however, he had, in all his tasks and enjoyments-a female of kindred formance ends with a long poetical incantaThe first scene of this extraordinary pergenius, taste, and capacity-lovely too beyond tion, sung by the invisible spirits over the all loveliness; but, as we gather, too nearly senseless victim before them. The second related to be lawfully beloved. The catas- shows him in the bright sunshine of morning, trophe of their unhappy passion is insinuated in the darkest and most ambiguous termson the top of the Jungfrau mountain, mediall that we make out is, that she died un-solitude as usual the voice of his habitual tating self-destruction-and uttering forth in timely and by violence, on account of this fatal attachment-though not by the act of its object. He killed her, he says, not with his hand--but his heart; and her blood was shed, though not by him! From that hour, life is a burden to him, and memory a torture -and the extent of his power and knowledge serves only to show him the hopelessness and endlessness of his misery.

The piece opens with his evocation of the Spirits of the Elements, from whom he demands the boon of forgetfulness-and questions them as to his own immortality. The scene is in his Gothic tower at midnight-and opens with a soliloquy that reveals at once the state of the speaker, and the genius of

the author.

"The lamp must be replenish'd-but even then
It will not burn so long as I must watch!
Philosophy and science, and the springs
Of wonder, and the wisdom of the world,
I have essayed, and in my mind there is
A power to make these subject to itself-
But they avail not: I have done men good,
And I have met with good even among men-
But this avail'd not: I have had my foes,
And none have baffled, many fallen before me-
But this avail'd not :-Good, or evil, life,
Powers, passions, all I see in other beings,
Have been to me as rain unto the sands,
Since that all-nameless hour! I have no dread,
And feel the curse to have no natural fear,

love and admiration for the grand and beauti-
despair, and those intermingled feelings of
ful objects with which he is environed, that
unconsciously win him back to a certain
kindly sympathy with human enjoyments.

"Man. The spirits I have raised abandon me-
The spells which I have studied baffle me-
The remedy I reck'd of tortured me;
It hath no power upon the past, and for
I lean no more on superhuman aid:
The future, till the past be gulf'd in darkness,
It is not of my search.-My mother Earth!
And thou fresh breaking Day, and you, ye Moun
Why are ye beautiful? I cannot love ye. [tains.
That openest over all, and unto all
And thou, the bright eye of the universe,
Art a delight-thou shin'st not on my heart.
And you, ye crags, upon whose extreme edge
I stand, and on the torrent's brink beneath
Behold the tall pines dwindled as to shrubs
In dizziness of distance; when a leap,
A stir, a motion, even a breath, would bring
My breast upon its rocky bosom's bed
To rest for ever-wherefore do I pause?
Ay,
Thou winged and cloud-cleaving minister,

[An eagle passen

Whose happy flight is highest into heaven,
Well may'st thou swoop so near me I should be
Thy prey, and gorge thine eaglets! thou art gone
Where the eye cannot follow thee; but thine eye
Yet piercest downward, onward, or above
With a pervading vision.-Beautiful!
How beautiful is all this visible world!

How glorious in its action and itself!
But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we,
Half dust, half deity, alike unfit

To sink or soar, with our mix'd essence make
A conflict of its elements, and breathe
The breath of degradation and of pride,
Contending with low wants and lofty will
Till our mortality predominates,

And men are what they name not to themselves,
And trust not to each other. Hark! the note,

[The shepherd's pipe in the distance is heard.
The natural music of the mountain reed-
For here the patriarchal days are not
A pastoral fable-pipes in the liberal air,
Mix'd with the sweet bells of the sauntering herd;
My soul would drink those echoes!-Oh, that I were
The viewless spirit of a lovely sound,
A living voice, a breathing harmony,
A bodiless enjoyment-born and dying
With the blest tone which made me!"-pp. 20-22.
At this period of his soliloquy, he is de-
scried by a Chamois hunter, who overhears

I know thee for a man of many thoughts,
I know thee, and the Powers which give thee power!
Fatal and fated in thy sufferings.
And deeds of good and ill, extreme in both,

I have expected this-what wouldst thou with me?
Man. To look upon thy beauty!—nothing fur-
ther."-pp. 31, 32.

There is something exquisitely beautiful, to our taste, in all this passage; and both the apparition and the dialogue are so managed, that the sense of their improbability is swalout actually believing that such spirits exist lowed up in that of their beauty;—and, withor communicate themselves, we feel for the moment as if we stood in their presence.