CONTENTS ART. I. Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. By Lord Byron. Canto the Third. II. OWEN'S NEW VIEW OF SOCIETY, &c. 1. A New View of Society; or Essays on the Principle of the Form- ation of the Human Character, and the Application of the Prin- ciple to Practice. By one of His Majesty's Justices of the Peace for the County of Lanark. 2. An Account of the Origin, Principles, Proceedings, and Results of an Institution for teaching Adults to read, established in the III. Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons, ap- pointed to inquire into the Education of the Lower Orders in the IV. The Works of Thomas Gray: Vol. I. containing the Poems, with critical Notes, a Life of the Author, and an Essay on his Poetry. Vol. II. containing the Letters, with important Additions_and Page V. The Inquisition Unmasked: being an Historical and Philosophi- cal Account of that Tremendous Tribunal, founded on Authen- tic Documents; and exhibiting the Necessity of its Suppression, as a Means of Reform and Regeneration. Written and pub- lished at a Time when the National Congress of Spain was about VI. ORIGIN AND ANTIQUITY OF THE ZODIAC. 1. Le Zodiaque Explique, ou Recherches sur l'Origine et la Signifi- cation des Constellations de la Sphère Grecque. Traduit du 2. Mémoire Explicatif sur la Sphère Caucasienne, et specialement sur 3. Encore quelques Argumens contre le Zodiaque. Par. C. G. S. - 136 VII. Letters written on board his Majesty's ship the Northumberland, and St. Helena, in which the Conduct and Conversations of Napoleon Buonaparte and his Suite, during the Voyage and the first Months of his Residence in that Island, are faithfully de- 1. Metrology, or an Exposition of Weights and Measures, chiefly those of Great Britain and France; comprising Tables of Com- parison, and Views of various Standards, with an Account of Laws and Local Customs, Parliamentary Reports, and other important Documents. By Patrick Kelly, LL. D. 2. Rees's New Cyclopædia, Article Standard. IX. Tales of my Landlord, collected and arranged by Jedediah Cleish- - - X. A Diary of a Journey into North Wales, in the Year 1774, by XI. Statements respecting the East India College, with an Appeal to Facts, in Refutation of the Charges lately brought against it, in the Court of Proprietors. By the Rev. T. R. Malthus, Pro- - XII. An Essay on the Question of reducing the Interest of the National Debt; in which the Justice and Expediency of that Measure are fully established. By J. R. M'Culloch, Esq. LIST OF BOOKS - - 270 THE BRITISH REVIEW, AND LONDON CRITICAL JOURNAL. FEBRUARY, 1817. ART. I.-Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto the Third. By Lord Byron. 8vo. pp. 79. Murray. London, 1816. THERE are two things which discover the stinted resources of an author-the sameness of his efforts on the ground on which his fame was first purchased, and the desertion of his genius every adventure beyond it. Having gone quite through his round of dark, portentous, and preposterous characters, Lord Byron, beginning again with that with which he first set out, invites us to undertake another journey with him and his old companion, that we may hear what they have further to say in disparagement of good order and human happiness, and the sacred right of living at large, and doing what one lists. There has since issued from the press a little brood of minor poems, beginning with the Prisoner of Chillon, in which lastmentioned production we see something of reclaimed nature and the pathos of real sensibility; but it would seem as if Lord Byron was at home only in his own menagerie, out of the bounds of which his genius could find no sufficient excitement to raise it above insipidity and languor. In the poem at the head of this article, the vagrant sentimentalist, whose feelings and disgusts are esteemed by the poet so worthy of being recorded, and who follows Lord Byron as a shadow does the substance, is introduced to us as a tourist through that line of country in which Englishmen of all denominations and callings have for these last two years, since the continent has been open to us, and for a century preceding the revolutionary war, been rambling. The descriptive powers of the poet have given a new interest to many of the scenes which meet the eye in this beaten track; and the painting in these descriptions would be often delightful, if the colours had been free from that foul admixture with which the personal character of the Childe has adulterated them. His impertinence is every where; it mixes itself with every scene; the glassy lake, the green valley, the azure distance, and the hoary pile, have all their peace disturbed by the repinings of a moody profligate, who, being destitute of the social principle, supposes himself in love with solitude, and mistakes his quarrel with man whom he has injured, and therefore hates, for a delight in the works of God, whom he has neither loved nor known. There is a species of misanthropy which great poets have well understood, and which excites our commiseration and respect, although we are the objects of its scorn. We can bear to be the objects of that harmless aversion which is the too frequent result of excess even on the virtuous side, and is wont to be produced by the recoil of too sanguine expectations and ill-requited benevolence; but to be told by an insolent renegade from society, by one who is a professed disciple of Epicurus, and whom the poet represents as the "outlaw of his own dark mind," that he looks upon us all with sovereign contempt; that he "holds little in common with us;" that he cannot "submit his thoughts to others;" that he has "a life within himself to breathe without mankind," and, oh exquisite effrontery! that "disgust has weaned his heart from all worldlings," is too provoking patiently to endure. The Canto now published is in some parts scarcely intelligible; and one of the difficulties we have had to encounter has been to ascertain when Lord Byron speaks in his own character, and when he is the organ of the fictitious character with which he seems so strangely enamoured. It is pretty evident, however, that the poet's own circumstances are first introduced to us. The first line of the poem hobbles terribly. "Is thy face like thy mother's, my fair child!" is a line which, if this poem should go down to a distant age, some sagacious critic, ignorant of the contempt in which our admired versifiers of the present day hold all the demands of the ear, may conjecture to have been framed after the manner of the epic poets of remoter antiquity, in imitation of the thing. described, and to suggest to the mind the vacillating gait of infancy. But we who are in the secret know better; we boast a school of versifiers, who have ingeniously discovered that cadence, and metre, and musical arrangement, are among the false ornaments and illegitimate arts of poetry. Into the feelings of Lord Byron as a father we do not enter: |