a few years was so intense, has Silly young men no longer think

The Byron mania, which for happily long since passed away. it necessary to dress à la Byron, nor silly young ladies to talk unmeaningly of his sweet poems. It was a false taste, excited by unreal and accidental causes, quite apart from the actual merit of his writings. He was a lord, an eccentric lord, a noble poet; and there was a romance about all his life, from his school-boy days down to his struggles on behalf of oppressed Greece, in whose service he spent his last years. Some powerful and beautiful passages there are in the most of his writings; but, as poem after poem appeared, the public found that it was but a fresh exhibition, in darkening colors, of the same picture-the working of a morbid misantrophy, of which he was himself the real original. I will read two stanzas, out of perhaps his greatest work, "Childe Harold," and one that excites interest from the descriptions he gives of Italy, and its architecture, paintings, statues, scenery, &c. I select these, because they supply one of the few passages, in which, forgetful of self, he exhibits a strong and right feeling for others. Many of you will know the lines well. They contain a description of the celebrated statue at Rome, which has been named "The Dying Gladiator,"

"I see before me the gladiator lie:

He leans upon his hand-his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony;
And his drooped head sinks gradually low-
And through his side the last drops ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,

Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now

The arena swims around him-he is gone,

Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hail'd the wretch who wom

He heard it, but he heeded not-his eyes

Were with his heart, and that was far away;

He reck'd not of the life he lost nor prize,

But where his rude hut by the Danube lay
There were his young Barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother-he, their sire,
Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday-

All this rush'd with his blood-Shall he expire
And unavenged?-Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire!"

Some of my earliest reminiscences are connected with Campbell; and later in life I met him constantly, both in London and elsewhere. When first as a child I heard him talked about, he had just published his beautiful and pathetic poem of "Gertrude of Wyoming." "The Pleasures of Hope" had preceded it, and had already gained for him a world-wide reputation. "Gertrude of Wyoming" was a tale of transatlantic life, transatlantic, of course I mean, in relation to England; and true and expressive are many of the pictures given of the rich and varied landscape at and about Wyoming," which was a settlement that had been destroyed by the Indians. It begins,

"On Susquehanna's side fair Wyoming!

Although the wild-flower on thy ruin'd wall,
And roofless homes, a sad remembrance bring
Of what thy gentle people did befall;

Yet thou wert once the loveliest land of all

That see the Atlantic wave their morn restore."

Afterwards the poet, having again mentioned the river, describes the scenery in its neighbourhood:

"Yet wanted not the eye for scope to muse,
Nor vistas open'd by the wandering stream;
Both where at evening Alleghany views,
Through ridges, burning in her western beam,
Lake after lake interminably gleam;

And past those settlers' haunts the eye might roam
Where earth's unliving silence all would seem;
Save where on rocks the beaver built his dome,
Or buffalo remote low'd far from human home.

But silent not that adverse eastern path,
Which saw Aurora's hills th' horizon crown;
There was the river heard in bed of wrath,
(A precipice of foam from mountains brown,)
Like tumults heard from some far distant town;
But softening in approach he left his gloom,
And murmur'd pleasantly, and laid him down
To kiss those easy curving banks of bloom,
That lent the windward air an exquisite perfume."

&

And further on he notices,—

"The winglet of the fairy humming-bird,

Like atoms of the rainbow fluttering round."

But we must not linger any longer by Susquehanna's side. Few of our modern poets are better known than Campbell; and in smaller lyrical pieces, such as "Hohenlinden," "The Battle of the Baltic," and "Ye Mariners of England," he is scarcely equalled by any, certainly surpassed by none. But these I need hardly mention, as they are become like "household words" familiar to every one. His greatest and best works were written when he was a young man. I think it was Scott who said of him, "Campbell would write more and more easily, if he were not so much afraid of his own reputation." And few poets were ever more fastidious in correcting and recorrecting, whatever he intended for publication. I was once staying with some friends of his and mine, when he sent them in manuscript his stanzas entitled "The Last Man," asking their judgment respecting them. As chance would have it, I was asked to read them aloud, that all present might hear them. But it so happened that the manuscript was not very legible, and there were several interlineations; and so it was rather difficult to make it out, reading it at sight. And, indeed, reading any poetry really well is not so easy a matter, as many people fancy; and altogether, I know it came to pass, that I made several blunders and great boggling; and I well remember what disgrace I got into for thus murdering his fine stanzas, and felt much ashamed of myself. Perhaps now, having them in print before me, and I may add in a volume, the gift of Campbell himself, with his own autograph, in the title page, I may succeed better, and will read some of them, not as being of equal merit with the other lyrical pieces I named before, but as being less known; and just to see, if I am myself improved in my manner of reading it :

(6 THE LAST MAN."

"All worldly shapes shall melt in gloom,

The sun himself must die,

Before this mortal shall assume
Its immortality!

I saw a vision in my sleep,

That gave my spirit strength to sweep
Adown the gulf of Time!

I saw the last of human mould,
That shall Creation's death behold,
As Adam saw her prime!

The sun's eye had a sickly glare,
The earth with age was wan;
The skeletons of nations were

Around that lonely man!

Some had expired in fight,—the brands
Still rusted in their bony hands,—

In plague and famine some!
Earth's cities had no sound nor tread;
And ships were drifting with the dead
To shores where all was dumb!

This spirit shall return to Him

Who gave its Heavenly spark;
Yet think not, Sun, it shall be dim
When thou thyself art dark!
No, it shall live again and shine
In bliss unknown to beams of thine,
By Him recall'd to breath,

Who captive led captivity-
Who robbed the grave of victory,
And took the sting from Death!

Go, Sun, while Mercy holds me up
On Nature's awful waste,

To drink this last and bitter cup

Of grief that man shall taste,-
Go, tell the night that hides thy face,
Thou saw'st the last of Adam's race
On earth's sepulchral clod,

The darkening universe defy
To quench his immortality,

Or shake his trust in God!"

Poor Campbell had many hard struggles in early life, and clouds darkened much his declining years. He was a man of a kindly spirit, an agreeable companion, possessed very considerable information, and was ever ready to impart it. He was once thinking, he told me, of publishing, in a periodical magazine, some papers on

the domestic life of the ancient Greeks. And from the various little incidental notices which he had gathered from their histories, biographies, orations, dramatic writings,-especially such as the satires of Aristophanes,-he thought he should be able to make out, with considerable exactness, "the weekly bills of the Grecian Dames," as he expressed it; "what was the price of bread, meat, and greengrocery at Athens, and all their little family arrangements." But I never could find that he carried out his plan, or left any sufficient matter in manuscript respecting it for the use of others. If done as he had pictured it, it would, I have no doubt, have been not only curious but interesting. He has not been very happy in his biographer, who executed the task with all the zeal of friendship; but that will not be enough to redeem two heavy octavo volumes from oblivion.

When I first met Southey, he was staying in Devonshire, at the house of one of my college friends, a few miles from my father's. I was much pleased at such an opportunity; for, besides the natural wish, before alluded to, that we all have to see and know those who have gained for themselves an honorable name, Southey was kind and simple in manners, and most agreeable and communicative in conversation. I went, on receiving the invitation to meet him, full of expectation; and, when I arrived, my friend expatiated with great delight on the rich treat he had been already enjoying, and which he was so pleased that I should share with him. It happened, however, that just as I arrived, Southey had received from London the proof-sheets of an article for the Quarterly Review, and Mr. Murray was importunate to have them returned by the next post. Then he was to leave Devonshire early the following morning, for his own residence in the North of England; and, as this was some years before the time of railroads, he was much occupied with the thoughts of his long and somewhat complicated route, and all the arrangements for his transit; and, last of all, I 'remember he had left a gold pencil-case, the gift of some friend, and for which he had a great value, at an inn at Dorchester, on his way down from London a day or two before: and he was planning how he might recover it, and have it forwarded to him. The consequence was, that on that occasion,