I heard the torrents leap and gush
O'er channell'd rock and broken bush;
I saw the white-wall'd distant town,
And whiter sails go skimming down;
And then there was a little isle,

9

Which in my very face did smile,
The only one in view;

A small green isle, it seem'd no more,
Scarce broader than my dungeon floor,
But in it there were three tall trees,
And o'er it blew the mountain breeze,
And by it there were waters flowing,
And on it there were young flowers growing,
Of gentle breath and hue.

The fish swam by the castle wall,

And they seem'd joyous each and all;
The eagle rode the rising blast,
Methought he never flew so fast
As then to me he seem'd to fly;
And then new tears came in my eye,
And I felt troubled-and would fain
I had not left my recent chain;
And when I did descend again,
The darkness of my dim abode
Fell on me as a heavy load;
It was as is a new-dug grave,
Closing o'er one we sought to save,-
And yet my glance, too much opprest,
Had almost need of such a rest.

XIV.

It might be months, or years, or days,
I kept no count, I took no note,

I had no hope my eyes to raise,

And clear them of their dreary mote;

9 Between the entrances of the Rhone and Villeneuve, not far from Chillon, is a very small island; the only one I could perceive, in my voyage round and over the lake, within its circumference. It contains a few trees (I think not above three), and from its singleness and diminutive size has a peculiar effect upon the view.

At last men came to set me free;

I ask'd not why, and reck'd not where;
It was at length the same to me,
Fetter'd or fetterless to be,

I learn'd to love despair.

And thus when they appear'd at last,
And all my bonds aside were cast,
These heavy walls to me had grown
A hermitage-and all my own!
And half I felt as they were come
To tear me from a second home:
With spiders I had friendship made,
And watch'd them in their sullen trade,
Had seen the mice by moonlight play,
And why should I feel less than they?
We were all inmates of one place,
And I, the monarch of each race,
Had power to kill-yet, strange to tell!
In quiet we had learn'd to dwell;'
My very chains and I grew friends,
So much a long communion tends
To make us what we are:-even I
Regain'd my freedom with a sigh."

1 [Here follows in the MS.

"Nor slew I of my subjects one
hath so little

What sovereign yet so much hath

}

done?"]

2 [It will readily be allowed that this singular poem is more powerful than pleasing. The dungeon of Bonnivard is, like that of Ugolino, a subject too dismal for even the power of the painter or poet to counteract its horrors. It is the more disagreeable as affording human hope no anchor to rest upon, and describing the sufferer, though a man of talents, and virtues, as altogether inert and powerless under his accumulated sufferings; yet, as a picture, however gloomy the colouring, it may rival any which Lord Byron has drawn ; nor is it possible to read it without a sinking of the heart, corresponding with that which he describes the victim to have suffered.-SIR Walter SCOTT.]

BEPPO:

A VENETIAN STORY.

Rosalind.

Farewell, Monsieur Traveller; Look, you lisp, and wear strange suits disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with your Nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are; or I will scarce think you have swam in a Gondola.

As You Like It, Act. IV., Scene i.

Annotation of the Commentators.

That is, been at Venice, which was much visited by the young English gentlemen of those times, and was then what Paris is now-the seat of all dissoluteness.-S. A.*

* ["Although I was only nine days at Venice, I saw, in that little time, more liberty to sin than ever I heard tell of in the city of London in nine years."ROGER ASCHAM.]

INTRODUCTION TO BEPPO.

GALT had heard, but could not vouch for the truth of the anecdote, that the day Lord Byron received the "Prospectus and Specimen of an intended National Work by William and Robert Whistlecraft," he sat down to spin a web of the same airy texture and finished "Beppo "at a single sitting. Even in the first draught, the poem consisted of eighty-four octave stanzas, which would be at the rate of more than a line a minute for eleven consecutive hours. Though Galt considers the feat not improbable, we believe it impossible, and are confident that if Lord Byron had performed it he would have put the marvel upon record. What is certain in the story is that "Beppo" was suggested by the "Prospectus and Specimen " put forth by Hookham Frere under the name of Whistlecraft, as Whistlecraft's model was the Bernesque of the Italians; so called from Berni, the first distinguished cultivator of the style. "I have written," said Lord Byron at the beginning of October, which was immediately after the completion of the fourth Canto of Childe Harold, a humorous poem, in the excellent manner of Mr. Whistlecraft, on a Venetian anecdote which amused me. It is called 'Beppo,' the short name for Giuseppe, that is the Joe of the Italian Joseph. Mr. Whistlecraft has no greater admirer than myself." Whistlecraft, however, attracted little attention, and is now quite forgotten, while "Beppo," when published anonymously in May, 1818, obtained, without the advantage of Lord Byron's name, a signal success. The difference in the poems explains and justifies the difference in their reception. The easy flow of Mr. Frere's "Specimen" showed a great command of idiomatic English, and was not without strokes of satirical wit, but was inferior in both to the "Beppo" of Byron. Mr. Frere took for his subject the fabulous days of King Arthur, and, except in occasional allusions, has neglected to animate his obsolete fiction with permanent passions or passing follies. Lord Byron has devoted a hundred stanzas to the telling of a brief and trivial anecdote, which even for the purposes of common conversation has no superfluity of point, but he had the tact to embroider it with numerous sketches of modern manners, which do, in reality, constitute the poem, and please by their liveliness and truth. The contrasted grouping of the characteristics of Italy and England, the criticisms of Laura upon her compeers at the Ball, the effect of the dawn upon the complexion of the dancers, the ludicrous mixture of feminine volatility, inquisitiveness, and loquacity in the crowd of incongruous questions with which the voluble wife greets her long-lost husband, are all transcripts from familiar life, and are narrated in a style which combines the music of an elaborate metre with the freedom of colloquial prose. Lord Byron said the piece had "politics and ferocity," but the politics are confined to a few casual allusions, and there is nothing which deserves the name of ferocity, unless it is the ridicule of Sotheby,-appropriately dubbed Botherby,—and of the blue-stockings who