"Of human suicides," says the late Opium Eater, "the most calm and deliberate is the following, which is said to have occurred at Keswick, in Cumberland. A young man of studious turn, who is reported to have resided near Penrith, was anxious to qualify himself for entering the Church, or for any other mode of life which might secure to him a reasonable portion of literary leisure. His family, however, thought that under the circumstances of his situation he would have a better chance for success in life as a tradesman ; and they took the necessary steps to place him as an apprentice to a shop-keeper at Penrith. This he looked upon as an indignity, to which he was determined in no case to submit; and accordingly, when he had ascertained that all opposition to the choice of his friends was useless, he walked over to the mountainous district of Keswick, about sixteen miles distant,-looked about him in order to select his ground-coolly walked up Lattrig, a dependence of Skiddaw-made a pillow of sods-laid himself down with his face looking up to the sky; and in that posture was found dead, with the appearance of having died tranquilly."

PARTISANS.-Truth should be submitted to the advice or revision of no man. It is said that the Marquis of Halifax had noted down the conversations he had had with Charles II. and the great and busy characters of the age. Of this curious secret history there existed two copies, and both copies were destroyed from opposite motives: the one, by the advice of Pope, who was alarmed at finding some of the Catholic intrigues of the court developed; and the other at the suggestion of a noble friend, who was equally shocked at discovering that his party, the revolutionists, had sometimes practised mean and dishonourable deceptions.

LOVE THE REASON OF THE ROTUNDITY OF THE GLOBE.-We extract the following curious conceit from a very singular production, entitled Effigies Amoris:-" Truly all the force of magic is in love, which is said to have the miraculous power of attracting things mutually together, and changing their natures: because the parts of the world, like the members of a great animal, depending on the same author, and the communion of the same nature, are joined together by one spirit informing the whole; and, which is the most certain sign of union, are collected into a globe, so that one part returns upon the other in a continual round,"

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THE

LITERARY EXAMINER.
EXAMINER.

No. XX. SATURDAY, NOV. 15, 1823.

REVIEW OF BOOKS.

Don Juan. Cantos XII. XIII. and XIV.

[Continued.]

In our last Number we suspended this our easy notice with the quotation of a few discursive stanzas on the characteristics of the British female. These appear to us to be intended to form a species of prelude to the description of a grande affaire, in which Don Juan may ultimately act the part of defendant, agreeably to English legal costume. But as the object of the Noble Author is "morality," he observes that he must proceed his own way; and accordingly, before we reach the portal of this great event, we are favoured with much amusing 'digression; and if his "thunderbolt not always rattles," the Poet has still something vast in store, since he declares that his

best Canto, save one on Astronomy, Will turn upon " Political Economy."

For in the opinion of Lord Byron,

That is your present theme for popularity:

It

Now that the public hedge hath scarce a stake,

grows an act of patriotic charity

To show the people the best way to break.

Among much pleasant matter of this digressionary description, we are favoured with a few piquant observations upon the comparative pleasure of loving and hating, in which the poet assumes to gaze

Where'er the palace or the hovel is,

Much in the mode of Goethe's Mephistophiles

That is to say, to be capable neither of love nor hate, although "not always so." Indeed, he sneers only because it occasionally suits his rhymes. No doubt he would be glad to "redress men's wrongs," and to check rather than punish crimes, had not Cervantes, in his too true tale of Quixote, shown the futility of such efforts. What a number of benevolent enthusiasts all over Europe will sympathise with the following impressive reflection upon the work in question! Yet the bard, who wrote it, has gone to Greece! How fortunate that the heart of man will occasionally spurn at the bondage of the head! But for that merciful provision of Nature, we should be very puny creatures.

VOL. I.

20

Of all tales 'tis the saddest--and more sad,

Because it makes us smile: his hero's right,
And still pursues the right;-to curb the bad,
His only object, and 'gainst odds to fight,
His guerdon: 'tis his virtue makes him mad!
But his adventures form a sorry sight;-
A sorrier still is the great moral taught
By that real Epic unto all who have thought.
Redressing injury, revenging wrong,

To aid the damsel and destroy the caitiff,
Opposing singly the united strong,

From foreign yoke to free the helpless native ;-
Alas! must nobiest views, like an old song,

Be for mere Fancy's sport a theme creative?

A jest, a riddle, Fame through thin and thick sought?
And Socrates himself but Wisdom's Quixote ?

We at length arrive at the principal personages of the forthcoming adventure. Lord Henry and Lady Adeline Amundeville are a lofty aristocratical pair, of the first quality and fashion ;-the Lady, beautiful and chaste, even "to detraction's desperation;" the Lord, a man known in the councils of the country,-cool, lofty, and imperturbable, although capable of a spark of fire upon occasion, and exhibiting a full portion of the English morgue. Moreover,

And reconciled all qualities which grace man,
Always a patriot, and sometimes a placeman.

We rather suspect that this portrait smacks of the mongrel, which may be denominated, ad libitum, the Whiggish Tory or the Tory-Whig. Be this as it may, his acquaintance with Don Juan, whom he was continually meeting at diplomatic dinners and noble routs, becomes intimate, and in consequence a welcome guest

(

At Blank-Blank Square;-for we will break no squares

By naming streets: since men are so censorious,
And apt to sow an author's wheat with tares,

Reaping allusions private and inglorious.

Where none were dreamt of, unto love's affairs,
Which were, or are, or are to be notorious,
That therefore do I previously declare,

Lord Henry's mansion was in Blank-Blank Square.
Also there bin another pious reason

For making squares and streets anonymous;

Which is, that there is scarce a single season

B

Which doth not shake some very splendid house
With some slight heart-quake of domestic treason-

A topic scandal doth delight to rouse :

Such I might stumble over unawares,
Unless I knew the very chastest Squares.

The Lady in many respects corresponds with her noble husband.

Whether this coldness be borrowed from the Chinese Mandarin or the Nil admirari of Horace, the Poet leaves undecided; but it seems to be settled that,

Rash enthusiasm, in good society,

Is nothing but a moral inebriety.

Lady Adeline, however, is not an 'absolute icicle, but rather resembles a frozen bottle of champagne, in the centre of which a liquid glassful will remain

To borrow another simile, the chilliest aspects may concentrate a hidden nectar;

And your cold people are beyond all price,

When once you have broken their confounded ice.

With this noble and stately pair Don Juan departs to their country seat, an event thus announced in the Morning Post :

"Departed for his country seat to-day,
Lord H. Amundeville and Lady A.

We understand the splendid host intends
To entertain, this Autumn, a select

And numerous party of his noble friends;

Midst whom we have heard, from sources quite correct,

The Duke of D- the shooting season spends,

With many more by rank and fashion decked:

Also a Foreigner of high condition,

The Envoy of the secret Russian mission.

This brilliant party are whirled down to Norman Abbey, formerly a monastery, and now a mansion, of the rich mixed Gothic, the remaining specimens of which artists allow to be very rare. And here, at the risk of somewhat extending our extract, we supply the following fine sketch of this antique abode. We are not acquainted with Newstead Abbey, and therefore cannot determine how far it has furnished materials for this beautiful description; but we cannot help concluding, from some of the passages, that it is the object kept in view throughout the whole of these admirable stanzas:

It stood embosomed in a happy valley,

Crown'd by high woodlands, where the Druid oak

Stood like Caráctacus in act to rally

His host, with broad arms 'gainst the thunder-stroke;
And from beneath his boughs were seen to sally

The dappled foresters-as day awoke,

The branching stag swept down with all his herd,
To quaff a brook which murmur'd like a bird.

Before the mansion lay a lucid lake,

Broad as transparent, deep, and freshly fed
By a river, which its soften'd way did take
In currents through the calmer water spread
Around the wild fowl nestled in the brake

And sedges, brooding in their liquid bed:
The woods sloped downwards to its brink, and stood
With their green faces fixed upon the flood.

Its outlet dash'd into a deep cascade,

Sparkling with foam, until again subsiding
Its shriller echoes-like an infant made
Quiet-sank into softer ripples, gliding

Into a rivulet; and thus allay'd,

Pursued its course, now gleaming, and now hiding
Its windings through the woods; now clear, now blue,
According as the skies their shadows threw.

A glorious remnant of the Gothic pile,

(While yet the church was Rome's) stood half apart In a grand Arch, which once screened many an aisle. These last had disappear'd—a loss to Art :

The first yet frown'd superbly o'er the soil,

And kindled feelings in the roughest heart,
Which mourn'd the power of time's or tempest's march,
In gazing on that venerable Arch.

Within a niche, nigh to its pinnacle,

Twelve saints had once stood sanctified in stone;
But these had fallen, not when the friars fell,

But in the war which struck Charles from his throne,
When each house was a fortalice-as tell
The annals of full many a line undone,
The gallant Cavaliers, who fought in vain
For those who knew not to resign or reign.
But in a higher niche, alone, but crown'd,

T

The Virgin Mother of the God-born child,
With her son in her blessed arms, look'd round,
Spared by some chance when all beside was spoil'd;"
She made the earth below seem holy ground.

This may be superstition, weak or wild,
But even the faintest relics of a shrine

Of any worship, wake some thoughts divine.
A mighty window, hollow in the centre,

Shorn of its glass of thousand colourings,

Through which the deepen'd glories once could enter,
Streaming from off the sun like seraph's wings,
Now yawns all desolate: now loud, now fainter,
The gale sweeps through its fretwork, and oft sings
The owl his anthem, where the silenced quire
Lie with their hallelujahs quench'd like fire.

But in the noontide of the Moon, and whens 972
The wind is winged from one point of heaven,
There moans a strange unearthly sound, which then
Is musical-a dying accent driven

Through the huge arch, which soars and sinks again.
Some deem it but the distant echo given
Back to the night wind by the waterfall,
And harmonized by the old choral wall:

Others, that some original shape, or form

Shaped by decay perchance, hath given the power
(Though less than that of Memnon's statue, warm
In Egypt's rays, to harp at a fixed hour)
To this grey ruin, with a voice to charm.

Sad, but serene, it sweeps o'er tree or tower:
The cause I know not, nor can solve; but such
The fact:-I've heard it,-once perhaps too much.

Amidst the court a Gothic fountain played,
Symmetrical, but deck'd with carvings quaint
Strange faces, like to men in masquerade,
And here perhaps a monster, there a Saint:
The spring gush'd through grim mouths, of granite made,
And sparkled into basins, where it spent

Its little torrent in a thousand bubbles,

Like man's vain glory, and his vainer troubles.

The mansion's self was vast and venerable,

With more of the monastic than has been

Elsewhere preserved: the cloisters still were stable,

The cells too and refectory, I ween:

An exquisite small chapel had been able,

Still unimpair'd, to decorate the scene;