hand, an earnest, single-eyed effort, nor | swer, In none of them. He was not bewas it, could it be, a mere display. He fore his age in anything-in opinion, or believed, and trembled as he believed, in feeling. He was not, in all or many that it was a serious thing to die, but did things, disgracefully behind it; nor did not sufficiently, if at all, feel that it was he move with equal and measured step as "serious a thing to live." He would in its procession. He stood to the age not struggle: he must shine; but could in a most awkward and uncertain attinot be content with mere shining without tude. He sneered at its advancement, struggle. And hence, ill at ease with and he lent money, and ultimately lost himself, aimless and hopeless, "like the his life, in attempting to promote it. He Cyclops-mad with blindness," he turned spoke with uniform contempt of, and to bay against society-man-and his imitated as uniformly, the masterpieces Maker. And hence, amid all that he of its literature. He abused Wordsworth has said to the world-and said so elo- in public, and in private "rolled him as quently, and said so mournfully, and said a sweet morsel unde his tongue;" or amid such wide, and silent, and profound rather, if you believe himself, took him attention-he has told it little save his as a drastic dose, to purify his bilious and own sad story. unhappy nature, by the strongest conWe pass, secondly, to speak of the re- trasted element that he could find. He lation in which he stood to his age. The often reviled and ridiculed revealed rerelations in which a man stands to his ligion, and yet read the Bible more faithage are perhaps threefold. He is either fully and statedly than most professed before it or behind it, or exactly on a Christians-made up in superstition what level with it. He is either its forerun- he wanted in faith-had a devout horror ner; or he is dragged as a captive at its at beginning his poems, undertaking his chariot-wheels; or he walks calmly, and journeys, or paring his nails on a Friday step for step, along with it. We behold in-and, had he lived, would probably have Milton the man before his age-not, in-ended, like his own Giaour, as Brother deed, in point of moral grandeur or mental Byron," with hair shirt and iron-spiked power; for, remember, his age was the girdle, in some Achaian or Armenian conage of the Puritans, the age of Hampden, vent. He habitually trampled on, and Selden, Howe, Vane, and of Cromwell, seems sometimes to have really despised, who was a greater writer than Milton the opinion of the public; and yet, in himself only it was with the sword that some points, felt it so keenly, that, says he wrote and whose deeds were quite Ebenezer Elliott, "he would have gone commensurate with Milton's words. But, into hysterics had a tailor laughed at in point of liberality of sentiment and him." And although, when the "Edinwidth of view, the poet strode across en-burgh Review" sought to crush him like tire centuries. We see in Southey the a worm, he rose from the heel a fiery, man behind his age, who, indeed, in his flying serpent, yet, to the assaults of the youth, took a rash and rapid race in ad-meaner creatures of the press, he was vance, but returned like a beaten dog, pervious all over, and allowed minnikin cowed, abashed, with downcast head, and arrows, which were beneath his laughter, tail between his legs, and ceased for the to rouse his rage. Absurd and ludicrous rest of his life to have much sympathy the spectacle of this Laocoon, covered with the leading movements of society. from head to foot with the snakes of suWe behold in Brougham one whom once pernal vengeance, bearing their burden the age was proud, in its ignorance, to with deep agonised silence, and yet startclaim as its child and champion, the ex-ing and shrieking upon the application of press image of its bustling, restless, ver- a thorn, which the hand of some puny satile, and onward character. In which passing malignant had thrust into his of these relations, is it asked, did Byron foot! In one respect, we grant that stand to his age? We are forced to an- Byron was the spirit of the age; he was

Thus, on the whole, we regard Byron neither as in any sense a creator, nor wholly as a creature of his period; but rather as a stranger entangled in the passing stream of its crowd, imperfectly adjusted to its customs, indifferently reconciled to its laws-among men, but not of them-a man of the world, but not a man of the age; and who has rather fallen furiously through it—spurning its heights, and seeking its depthsthan left on it any deep or definite

the representative of its wants, its weak- "the literature of desperation:" they are ness, its discontents, its dark unrest-but a literature of desperation in themselves; not of its aspirations, its widening charity, they condense into one volume what and its hopeful tendencies. His voice in France has been diluted throughout was the deep vague moan of the world's many, and, consequently, our country has dream-his writhing anguish, the last drained off at one draught, and survived struggle of its troubled slumber: it has the experiment, the poison which our since awaked, or is awakening, and, "as neighbours have been sipping for years, a dream when one awakeneth," it is de- to their deadly harm. spising, too much despising, his image. He stood high, yet helpless, above our transition period, and all the helpless and the hopeless rallied round to constitute him first magistrate over a city in flames -supreme ruler in a blasted and ruined realm. In one thing he was certainly a prophet; namely, a prophet of evil. As misery was the secret sting of all his inspiration, it became the invariable matter of all his song. In some of his poems you have misery contemplating; in others, misery weeping aloud; in others, misery impression. Some men are buried, and revolving and reproducing the past; in straightway forgotton-shovelled out of others, misery bursting the confines of the memory as soon as shovelled into the world, as if in search of a wider hell than tomb. Others are buried, and from that in which it felt itself environed; in their graves, through the hands of minisothers, misery stooping to turn and rend tering love, arise fragrant flowers and its real or imaginary foes; and in others, verdant branches, and thus are they, in misery breaking out into hollow, hopeless, a subordinate sense, "raised in glory." and heartless laughter. (What a ter- Others, again, lie down in the dust, and rible thing is the laugh of the unhappy! though no blossom or bough marks the It is the very "echo to the seat where spot, and though the timid shun it at sorrow is throned.") But in all you evening-tides as a spot unblessed, yet have misery: and whether he returns forgotten it can never be, for there lies the old thunder in a voice of kindred the record of a great guilty life extinct, power and majesty, or sings an evening and the crown of crime sits silent and song with the grasshopper at his feet-shadowy on the tombstone. This is smiles the smile of bitterness, or sheds Byron's memorial in the age. But, as the burning tears of anger-his voice even on Nero's tomb "some hand unseen still speaks of desolation, mourning, and strewed flowers," and as "nothing dies but wo; the vocabulary of grief labours under something mourns," let us lay a frail garthe demands of his melancholy genius; land upon the sepulchre of a ruin, and and never more, till this scene of tears say, requiescat in pace, as we hurry on. and sighs be ended, shall we meet with We come, thirdly, to speak of the a more authentic and profound expound-leading features of his artistic execution, er of the wretchedness of man. And as and the materials which his genius used. such we deem him to have done good And here there are less mingled feelings service; because he who approaches to- to embarrass the critical contemplator. ward the bottom of human wo, proves Strong, direct intellect, descriptive force, that it is not altogether bottomless, how- and personal passion, seem the main eleever deep; and because the writings of ments of Byron's poetical power. He Byron have saved us, in this country, sees clearly, he selects judiciously for what in France has been so pernicious, effect from among the points he does

see, and he paints them with a pencil finds its subjects and its haunts. Driven dipped in his own fiery heart. He was from a home in his country, he seeks a splendid representative of the English it in the mansions of all unhappy hearts, character of mind. His lordly indepen- which open gloomily, and admit him as dence and high-spiritedness; his fearless their tenant and their bard. To escape avowal of his prejudices, however nar- from one's-self, is the desire of many, row, and passions, however coarse; his of all the miserable-the desire of the constant clearness and decision of tone drunkard, of the opium-eater, of those and of style; his manly vigour and direct- who plunge into the vortex of any disness; his strong unreasoning instinctive sipation, who indulge in any delicious sense; his abhorrence of mysticism; and dream; but it is the singularity of Byhis frequent caprices-all savoured of ron that he uniformly escapes from himthat literature which had reared Dryden, self into something more miserable. His Pope, and Johnson; and every peculiarity being transmigrates into a darker and of the English school seems to have clus- more demoniac shape; he becomes an tered in and around him. Byron was, epicure even in wretchedness; he has perhaps, with the exception of Shakspere supped full of common miseries, and and Milton, the greatest purely English must create and exhaust imaginary horpoet. His manner had generally all the rors. What infinite pity that a being so clearness and precision of sculpture; in- gifted, and that might have been so deed, his clearness serves often to disguise noble, should find it necessary perpehis depth. As obscurity sometimes gives tually to evade himself! Hence his writan air of mystic profundity and solemn ings abound, more than those of other grandeur to a shallow puddle, so, on the authors, with lines and phrases which other hand, we have seen pools among seem to concentrate all wretchedness withthe mountains, whose pellucidity made in them-with texts for misanthropes them appear less profound, and where and mottoes for the mouths of suicides. every small shining pebble was a bright liar as to the real depth of the waters; such pools are many of the poems of Byron, and we may add of Campbell.

"Years all winters"-what a gasp is that, and how characteristic of him to whose soul summer had not come, and spring had for ever faded! The charge His dominion over the darker passions of affectation has often been brought is one of the most obvious features in his against Byron's proclamations of personal poetic character. He rode in a chariot wo. But no one, we believe, was ever drawn, if we may use the figure, by those a constant and consistent hypocrite in horses described in the visions of the such a matter as misery; and we think Apocalypse, "whose heads were as the we can argue his sincerity, not merely heads of lions, and out of their mouths from his personal declarations, but from issued fire, and smoke, and brimstone." this fact, that all the characters into And supreme is his management of these whom he shoots his soul are unhappy. dreadful coursers. Wherever human na- Tasso writhing in the dungeon, Dante ture is fiercest and gloomiest-wherever prophesying evil, not to speak of imagifurnace-bosoms have been heated seven nary heroes, such as Conrad, Alp, the times hotter by the unrestrained passions Giaour, and Childe Harold, betray in and the torrid suns of the East and the what direction ran the master current South-wherever man verges toward the of his soul; and as the bells and bubbles animal or the fiend-wherever misan- upon the dark pool form an accurate thropes have folded their arms, and measurement of its depth, so his mirth, taken their desperate attitude-wher- in its wildness, recklessness, and utter ever stands "the bed of sin, delirious want of genuine gaiety, tells sad tales with its dread"-wherever devours "the about the state of a heart which neither worm that cannot sleep, and never dies" on earth nor in heaven could find aught -there the melancholy muse of Byron to cheer or comfort it.

Besides those intensely English quali- in the empire, and thereby stirred his ties which we have enumerated as By- pride, and effectually roused his faculties. ron's, there sprung out from him, and It required a scorching heat to batch a mainly through the spur of wo, a higher Byron! In his "English Bards," ho power than appeared originally to be- proved himself rather a pugilist than a long to his nature. After all his fa- poet. It is the work of a man of Belial, culties seemed fully developed, and after "flown with insolence and wine." His critics and craniologists had formed their popular productions were principally writunalterable estimate of them, he began, ten when he was still a favourite son of as if miraculously, to grow into a society, the idol of drawing-rooms, and loftier shape and stature, and compelled the admired, as well as observed, of all these same sapient judges, slowly and observers. "Childe Harold" is a tranreluctantly, to amend their conclusions. scription of the serious and publishable In his "Cain," his "Heaven and Earth," part of his journal, as he travelled in and his "Vision of Judgment," he ex- Greece, Spain, and Italy. "The Giaour" hibited the highest form of the faculty di- is a powerful, half-length picture of himvine-the true afflatus of the bard. He self. "The Bride of Abydos" is a tender seemed to rise consciously into his own and somewhat maudlin memory of Greece. region; and, certainly, for gloomy gran- "The Corsair" was the work of a fortdeur, and deep, desolate beauty, these night, and seems to have brought one productions surpass all the writings of period of his life, as well as of his poputhe period. Now, for the first time, larity, to a glittering point. In all this men saw the Pandemonian palace of his class of his poems, we see him rather resoul fully lit, and they trembled at its volving the memory of past, than encounghastly splendour. Yet, curious it is to tering the reality of present, misery. You remark that those were precisely the have pensive sentiment rather than quick poems which the public at first received and fresh anguish. But his war with somost coldly. Those who shouted ap-ciety was now about to begin in right plause when he issued the two first ele- earnest; and, in prophetic anticipation of gant, but comparatively shallow, cantos this, he wrote his "Parasina" and his of "Childe Harold," which were the reflection of other minds, shrank from him when he displayed the terrible riches of his own.

We need only mention the materials on which Byron's genius fed—and, indeed, we must substitute the singular term -for his material was not manifold, but one; it was the history of his own heart that his genius reproduced in all his poems. His poetry was the mirror of himself.

Siege of Corinth." These were the first great drops of the thunder-storm he was soon to pour down upon the world; and the second of them, in its heat and frenzied haste, proclaims a troubled and distracted state of mind. In referring his medical advisers to it as a proof of his mental insanity he rather blundered; for, although it wants the incoherence, it has the fury of madness. It is the most rapid and furious race he ever ran to escape from himself. Then came his open breach In considering, fourthly, the more cha- with English society, his separation from racteristic of his works, we may divide his lady, and his growling retreat to his them into his juvenile productions, his Italian den. But ere yet he plunged popular, and his proscribed works. His into that pool, where the degradation of juvenile productions testified to nothing his genius, and where its power were perbut the power of his passions, the strength of his ambition, and the uncertainty of his aims. His "Hours of Idleness" was, in one respect, the happiest hit he ever made; it was fortunate enough to attract abuse from the highest critical authority

fect, he must turn round, and close in wilder, loftier measures the sad song of "Childe Harold," which in life's summer he had begun; and strange it was to mark, in those two last cantos, not only their deepened power and earnestness,

but their multiplied sorrow. He seemed but as one of the finest poems in this or to have gone away to Addison's "Moun- any language. It is such a work as Milton, tain of Miseries," and exchanged one bur- had he been miserable, would have writden for a worse-sorrow for despair. He ten. There is nothing in "Paradise Lost" had fallen so low, that suicide had lost superior to Cain's flight with Lucifer its charms: and when one falls beneath through the stars, and nothing in Shakthe suicide point, his misery is perfect; spere superior to his conversations with for his quarrel then is not with life, but his wife Adah. We speak simply of its with being. Yet how horribly beautiful morits as a work of art-its object is worhis conversation with the dust of empires thy of all condemnation: that is, to paint -with the gigantic skeleton of Rome a more soured and savage Manfred, enwith the ocean, which meets him like gaged in a controversy, not merely with that simulacrum of the Sea which haunt- himself, but with the system of which he ed the madness of Caligula with all the is one diseased and desperate member; mighty miserable in the past with those in the unequal strife overwhelmed, and, spirits which he summons from the "vasty as if the crush of Omnipotence were not deep" or with those ill-favoured ones enough, bringing down after him, in his "who walk the shadow of the vale of fall, the weight of a brother's blood; and death." He speaks to them as their the object of the fable is not, as it ought equal and kindred spirit. "Hell from to have been, to show the madness of all beneath is moved to meet him at his selfish struggle against the laws of God, coming: they speak, and say unto him, but to more than intimate the poet's beArt thou become like unto us?" As lief, that the laws which occasion such a another potentate, do those "Anarchs struggle are cruel and unjust. There is old"-Orcus, Hades, and the "dreaded Name of Demogorgon"-admit him into their company, and make him free of the privileges of their dreary realm.

an unfair distribution of misery and guilt in the story. The misery principally accrues to Cain; but a large proportion of the guilt is caught, as by a whirlwind, and flies up in the face of his Maker. The great crime of the poem is not that its hero utters blasphemies, but that you shut it with a doubt whether these blasphemies be not true. Milton wrote his great poem to "justify the ways of God to man;" Byron's object seems to be, to jus

Having thus taken a last proud farewell of society, with all its forms and conventionalities, he turned him to the task of pouring out his envenomed and disappointed spirit in works which society was as certain to proscribe as it was to peruse; and there followed that marvellous series of poems to which we have al-tify the ways of man to God-even his ready referred as his most peculiar and wildest and most desperate doings. The powerful productions-most powerful, be- pleading is eloquent, but hopeless. It is cause most sincere. And yet the public the bubble on the ridge of the cataract proved how false and worthless its former praying not to be carried over and hurried estimate of Byron's genius had been, by on. Equally vain it is to struggle against denouncing those, his best writings, not those austere and awful laws by which momerely for their wickedness, but for their ments of sin expand into centuries of puartistic execution. It is humiliating to nishment. Yet this was Byron's own liferevert to the reviews and newspapers of long struggle, and one which, like men that period, and to read the language in who fight their battles o'er again in sleep, which they speak of "Cain," "Sardana- he renewed again and again in every palus," and the "Vision of Judgment," dream of his imagination. uniformly treating them as miserable fallings-of from his former self-beneath even the standard of his "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." "Cain" we regard not only as Byron's noblest production,

"The Vision of Judgment," unquestionably the best abused, is also one of the best, and by no means the most profane, of his productions. It sprung from the savage disgust produced in his mind