in the next, admits him to be a scholar, or commends him as a poet. of Lord Byron and of his muse, we should have heard no more, till time, at least, and meditation, should have Perhaps it will be thought unnecesenlarged the soul of the poet, and sary to have lacerated his lordship so mellowed the power of his song. But deeply, in the dissection of his works. a very few months since his Lordship and But the noble author has so identified the public parted in no very pleasant himself with his theme, that it is next mood; he called them forth not as arbitrators, but as parties in his domestic to impossible to sever him from his feuds; they obeyed the summons, but subject. Besides, we had an object the cause which they espoused was not in making an anatomy of his lordship. that of his Lordship; they gave their It has been said, by one whose opinion sentence with justice and enforced it with spirit; and from that decision, deserves consideration, that‘none but after a vain, and, in our opinion, a paltry a good man can be a good orator.' If appeal to their worst passions, he fled. the axiom be equally applicable to the We little thought that his Lordship poet, perhaps we have detected the would again have wooed so disdainful a secret of his lordship's failure !—and it mistress, especially when that mistress had begun to show some signs of lassimay be useful to point it out. tude on the endless repetition of the same tedious and disgusting strain. And yet his Lordship informs us, We have protracted, beyond our intention, what we designed merely as an introduction to a review which we have extracted from the British Critic. In resuming the exercise of those rights which she seemed for a time to have abdicated, Criticism enters on the duties of her office in sullen state, and proceeds to arraign his lordship for a long arrearage of offences. We would not be understood as entirely according with the decisions of the reviewer, though we think them nearly as dispassionate, and quite as just, as such sentences generally are. "I have not loved the world, nor the world me; Nor coined my cheek to smiles-nor cried aloud "This is all vastly indignant and vastly grand; yet we have now two witnesses before us who speak a very different language, and we find ten more in Mr. Murray's catalogue, who tell the same tale. The man who sends out into the world a single poem, the labour perhaps of years, may affect, with some pretence of probability, to scorn the voice of public censure or approbation; but he who, at intervals only of a few months, shall continue to court the expectations of the world with the suc"We had cherished a hope, that cessive fruits of his poetic talent, not singer, besides being honoured with the epithet above alluded to, is thus coupled in a stanza with another worthy of the same school, Let simple Wordsworth chime his childish verse, And brother Coleridge lull the babe at nurse. only exists a pensioner upon public fame, but lives even from hand to mouth upon popular applause. Every poem which he publishes is a living witness that he bows to the idolatry of the world a patient knee, and that he worships the very echo which he professes to scorn. "The first publication of the noble And yet in return for some paltry compliment, his lordship has christened the Christabel,' the most puling and drivelling of all baby-nurse,' Lord which claims our attention is the Coleridge's bantlings, that wild and singularly priginal and beautiful poem' third part of Childe Harold. As the vastly superior both he and his genius are to the common herd of mankind; that he is a being of another and higher order, whose scowl is sublimity, and whose frown is majesty. We have the Arst and second parts of this poem appeared before we commenced our critical labours, we shall pass no opinion on their merits, except that they were too generally over-rated by the fashion of the day. The poem before us is much noble Lord's word for this and for a more likely to find its level. The no- great deal more, and if he would have ble Lord has made such draughts upon been content with telling us so not more public partiality, that little is now left than half a dozen times, to please him, him but the dregs of a cup which he we would have believed it. But he once fondly thought to be inexhaustible. has pressed so unmercifully, that we The hero of the poem is, as usual, him- now begin to call for proof, and all self: for he has now so unequivocally the proof we can find is in his own asidentified himself with his fictitious hero, sertion. The noble Lord has written that even in his most querulous moods, a few very fine, and a few very pretty he cannot complain of our impertinence verses, which may be selected from a in tracing the resemblance. We really heap of crude, harsh, unpoetical strains; wish that the noble Lord would suppose farther than this we neither know nor that there was some other being in the wish to know of his Lordship's fame. world besides himself, and employ his His Lordship's style, by a fortunate bit, imagination in tracing the lineament of caught the favourable moment in the some other character than his own. One turn of the public taste; his gall was would have imagined that in twelve mistaken for spirit, his affectation for several and successive efforts of his feeling, and his harshness for originality. muse, something a little newer than this The world are now growing tired of same inexhaustible self might have been their luminary, and wait only for the invented. Wherever we turn, the same rise of some new meteor, to transfer portrait meets our eye. We see it now their admiration and applause. The glaring in oils, now sobered in fresco, noble Lord had talents, which if they now dim in transparency. Sometimes had been duly husbanded, might have it frowns in the turban of the Turk, ensured him a more permanent place sometimes it struts in the buskins and in their estimation. His Lordship never cloak of the Spaniard, and sometimes could have been a Milton, a Dryden, a it descends to fret in its native costume; Pope, or a Gray, but he might have but frown, strut, or fret where it will, been a star of the third or fourth magthe face is still but one, and the features nitude, whose beams would have shown are still the same. 66 Mungo here, even upon posterity with no contemptiMungo there, Mungo every where." ble lustre. As the matter stands, he We are ever ready to listen with all will now be too late convinced that he due patience to a long story, provi- whose theme is only self, will find at ded it be not too often repeated, but last that self his only audience. there is really a limit beyond which "The first sixteen stanzas of the Poem buman patience ceases to be a virtue. before us are dedicated to this one We must come at last to the question, everlasting theme, and contain, like a What is Lord Byron to us, and what repetition pye, nothing more than the have we to do either with his sublimity scraps of his former strains, seasoned or his sulks? It is his poetical not his rather with the garlic of misanthropy personal character which is the subject than the salt of wit. "Self-exiled of our criticism, and when the latter is Harold" reaches the plain of Waterloo, so needlessly obtruded upon our atten- but with a step not more auspicious tion, it betrays at once poverty of invention and lack of discretion. The noble Lord is ever informing us how than that of preceding poets, who have trod that bloody plain. We know not what strange fatality attends a theme so sa cred, so sublime: whether it be that the cally mixed," our only idea is that of grandeur of reality overpowers the faint a "Cordial compound." The whole of gleam of fiction, or that there are deeds the address to Bonaparte is at once common-place. too mighty to be sung by living bards, crude and In one the plains of Waterloo will live in the stanza the noble Lord has clearly been records of history, not in the strains of a plagiarist from W. Scott. poetry. The description of the dance preceding the morning of the battle is well imagined, and excepting the fourth flat and rugged line, is happily expressed. LI. "A thousand battles have assail'd thy banks, But these and half their fame have pass'd away, And slaughter heap'd on high his weltering ranks; Their very graves are gone, and what are they? Thy waves would vainly roll, all sweeping as 'Our readers will readily call to mind the following beautiful lines in the Lay of the Last Minstrel. "Sweet Teviot, on thy silver tide Here we have precisely the same 'The noble Lord, as may easily be imagined, is very indignant that order, peace, and legitimate sovereignty should have been restored to Europe. The reflections which succeed partake as little of patriotism as of poetry; let us take the following stanza for an ex- confusion. ample., we The noble Lord cannot find it in his heart to pay the tribute even of a passing line to the heroic commander, who stands confessed, even by his very foes, the sword of Britain and the shield of Europe. The poetry of Byron stands in far greater need of the name of Wellington, than the name of Wellington does of the poetry of Byron. From Waterloo the noble Lord tra If this be philosophy, it is unintelli- vels by Coblentz down the Rhine to gible; if it be sentiment, it is unbear- Switzerland. The magnificent scenery able; if it be poetry, it is unreadable. which the banks of that river present is When we come to "spirits antitheti- B VOL. 1. NO. I A roads, path to perpetuity of fame : but tamely and ruggedly drawn: he is Mortals, who sought and found, by dangerous attended with better success when he enters the territories of the Swiss. The following description of a night sail on the Lake of Lausanne is perhaps the most brilliant passage in the poem. LXXXV. Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake, To waft me from distraction; once I loved LXXXVI. "It is the blush of night, and all between more; LXXXVII. "He is an evening reveller, who makes "Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven! themselves a star." P. 47. They were of gigantic minds, and their steep aim, the flame Of Heaven again assail'd, if Heaven the while On man and man's research could deign to do more than smile. CVI. "The one was fire and fickleness, a child, CVII. "The other, deep and slow, exhausting thought, And doom'd him to the zealot's ready Hell, "Yet peace be with their ashes,—for by them, It is not ours to judge,--far less condemn ; Known unto all,-or hope and dread allay'd "Twill be to be forgiven, or suffer what is just.” P. 57. To the sentiments contained in the last stanza, if not to the poetry, we bow with unfeigned respect; but though we would not hastily condemn the frailties and the errors of others, yet we would not confound light and darkness, truth and falsehood, in one undistinguished mass. The same hand which committed the sacred charge of truth to our care, will demand it again unpolluted at our hands. To condemn the error we are commanded; to condemn the person we are forbidden. That final judgment rests in a higher tribunal, which we fear, for the sake of the noble lord and of ourselves, will too surely "deign do more than smile." "The Prisoner of Chillon is the com- "The world was void, And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they They slept on the abyss without a surge- grave, The moon, their mistress, had expired before; And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need Of aid from them-She was the universe." P. 30. That for this planet strangers his memory task'd Were it not that all life must end in one, Thus spoke he,-I believe the man of whom 'To pay him honour,—and myself whate'er From out my pocket's avaricious nook 'The noble Lord seems to be in the to a course of empty dishes, which are humour of Timon, to invite his friends finally to be discharged at their heads. 'We must confess that criticism is Profane enough we must own ourselves, unable to reach a strain so sublime as for never did we more heartily laugh this. If this be called genius, as we than at the conclusion of this burlesque ; suppose it must, we are of opinion that in which we think the noble Lord has the madness of that aforesaid quality is shown no ordinary talents. So much much more conspicuous than its inspi- for the "Visit to Churchill's grave." ration. But after the noble Lord has The next poem, called carried us with him in his air balloon to Dream," contains as usual a long hisso high an eminence in the sublime, on tory of "my own magnificent self." a sudden he discharges the gas, and down we drop to the lowest depth of the bathos below. "I stood beside the grave of him who blazed At the conclusion we are told "The "The Wanderer was alone as heretofore, men, |