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Where the nightingale doth sing
Not a senseless, tranced thing,
But divine, melodious truth;
Philosophic numbers smooth;
Tales and golden histories
Of heaven and its mysteries.

Thus ye live on high, and then On the earth ye live again; And the souls ye left behind you Teach us, here, the way to find you, Where your other souls are joying, Never slumber'd, never cloying. Here, your earth-born souls still speak To mortals of their little week; Of their sorrows and delights; Of their passions and their spites; Of their glory and their shame; What doth strengthen and what maim. Thus ye teach us, every day, Wisdom, though fled far away.

Bards of Passion and of Mirth, Ye have left your souls on earth! Ye have souls in heaven too, Double-lived in regions new!

CITY AND SUBURB.

To one who has been long in city pent, 'Tis very sweet to look into the fair

And open face of heaven,-to breathe a prayer Full in the smile of the blue firmament.*

Who is more happy, when, with heart's content,
Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair
Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair
And gentle tale of love and languishment?
Returning home at evening, with an ear
Catching the notes of Philomel,—an eye
Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career,
He mourns that day so soon has glided by:
E'en like the passage of an angel's tear
That falls through the clear ether silently.

So Milton in Par. Lost, ix. 445–455:—

As one who, long in populous city pent,

Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,

Forth issuing on a summer's morn, &c.-See p. 189.

BYRON.

1788-1824.

PRINCIPAL WORKS:-Hours of Idleness, 1807, attacked with an excess of critical severity by Brougham in the recently established Edinburgh Review.-English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 1808, a satirical and exceedingly witty reply to his critics, upon whom he made a pitiless onslaught.-Childe Harold (first two cantos), 1812, the result of two years travelling in the Peninsula and in Greece; and written in the Spenserian stanza.—The Giaour and The Bride of Abydos, 1813.—The Corsair and Lara, 1814, written, like the two former poems, in the versification of Scott, but with sufficient differences of style. They are romances founded upon Greek and Oriental life and scenery, and abound in interesting and charming situations. They at once secured the unbounded favour and admiration of the whole reading world; and Byron, at the age of twenty-five, was at the acknowledged as well as undoubted head of all the poets of his time, for Shelley was as yet unknown to fame. Until the turn in the public, or rather fashionable, feeling (caused by the revelations of his private life which followed on the separation from his wife after a twelvemonth's union) no writer ever received so unbounded adulation, excepting perhaps the author of Candide and Zaïre: nor did those scandals affect so much his popularity as they provoked the somewhat arbitrary criticism of the world of fashion. In fact, it is certain that the 'wild' life of the noble poet, and the air of mystery which always hung about his career, contributed not a little to create the enthusiasm which the actual merits of his productions alone would scarcely have secured.-The Siege of Corinth and Parisina, published about this period, betray something of the consciousness of the revolution of feeling, real or affected, towards him.— The third canto of Childe Harold was written and given to the world by the poet while, a voluntary exile, he was wandering about, chiefly in France and Switzerland. The fourth and concluding canto appeared in 1818. Mazeppa, the first five cantos of Don Juan, his dramas of Marino Faliero, The Two Foscari, Cain, appeared between 1818 and 1821; having been written during his residence at Venice and Ravenna. Manfred, his earliest dramatic effort, had been produced some time before. The dramas, although exhibiting in many parts the splendid

genius of the poet, could not add much to his already great and deserved reputation. The genius and strength of Byron, which was essentially lyrical and descriptive, did not excel in that style of poetry which represents variety of character and professes to reveal the secret motives of human action.-The continuation and completion of Don Juan, extending to fifteen cantos, 1822, was his last great work.

It is scarcely necessary to point out the characteristic features of Byron's poetry-the most read, probably, of any in any age or country. His poetic fire, rapidity, grace, mingled irony and pathos have never been surpassed or indeed equalled. Improving upon the example of Scott, he was the first (in practice: in principle he appears from his published letters to have been more conservative) to break away from the traditions of the old 'classical' school, which too often considered the form rather than the substance. The genius of Byron was as versatile as it was energetic. Childe Harold and Don Juan are perhaps the greatest poetical works of this century,* and in his tales and minor poems there is a grace, an interest, and romantic picturesqueness that render them peculiarly fascinating to youthful readers. The Giaour has passages of still higher description and feeling-particularly that fine burst on modern Greece contrasted with its ancient glory, and the exquisitely pathetic and beautiful comparison of the same country to the human frame bereft of life. The Prisoner of Chillon is also natural and affecting the story is painful and hopeless, but it is told with inimitable tenderness and simplicity. The reality of the scenes in Don Juan must strike every reader. Byron, it is well known, took pains to collect his materials. His account of the shipwreck is drawn from narratives of actual occurrence, and his Grecian pictures, feasts, dresses, and holiday pastimes, are literal transcripts from life. Coleridge thought the character of Lambro, and especially the description of his return, the finest of all Byron's efforts: it is more dramatic and life-like than any other of his numerous paintings. Haidee is also the most captivating of all his heroines. His Gulnares and Medoras, his corsairs and dark mysterious personages,—

Link'd with one virtue, and a thousand crimes,—

are monstrosities in nature, and do not possess one tithe of the interest or permanent poetical beauty that centres in the lonely residence in the Cyclades. The English descriptions in Don Juan are also far inferior. There is a palpable falling off in poetical powers, and the peculiar prejudices and forced ill-natured satire of the poet are brought prominently

* Some may be disposed to think that the supreme poetic honour is due rather to the Prometheus Unbound or The Cenci-if by 'greatness' is meant at once sublimity of genius, true poetic feeling, and earnestness of moral purpose. To the chefs-d'œuvre of Byron may be more justly conceded the first place for 'brilliancy.'

forward. Yet even here we have occasionally a flash of the early light that "led astray." The sketch of Aurora Raby is graceful and interesting (compared with Haidee, it is something like Fielding's Amelia coming after Sophia Western), and Newstead Abbey is described with a clearness and beauty not unworthy of the author of Childe Harold. The Epicurean philosophy of the Childe is visible in every page of Don Juan; but it is no longer grave, dignified, and misanthropical: it is mixed up with wit, humour, the keenest penetration, and the most astonishing variety of expression, from colloquial carelessness and ease to the highest and deepest tones of the lyre. The poet has the power of Mephistopheles over the scenes and passions of human life and society -disclosing their secret workings, and stripping them of all conventional allurements and disguises. Unfortunately his knowledge is more of evil than of good. The distinctions between virtue and vice had been broken down or obscured in his own mind, and they are undistinguishable in Don Juan. Early sensuality had tainted his whole nature. portrays generous emotions and moral feelings-distress, suffering, and pathos-and then dashes them with burlesque humour, wild profanity, and unseasonable merriment. In Childe Harold we have none of this moral anatomy, or its accompanying licentiousness: but there is abundance of scorn and defiance of the ordinary pursuits and ambitions of mankind.'-Cyclopædia of English Literature. The well-known verse in which he characterises the great historian of the Decline and Fall

as:

The lord of Irony-that master-spell'

He

might almost equally well be applied to himself, with the difference, however, that the eipwvela of the poet wants the calm gravity of the historian. It is more akin, indeed, to the style (so far as the poetic style can be compared with prose) of the great French critic. Never, says Macaulay, had any writer so vast a command of the whole eloquence of scorn, misanthropy, and despair.

If we compare him with his contemporary Shelley, between whom and himself, as far as their different temperaments and opinions would allow, a friendship had been formed; though they both display a strong antagonism to, and impatience of, received religious and social dogmas, it is obvious to observe that, while with Byron the real or fancied injustice of fashionable society in, as he believed, capriciously selecting him as a sort of 'scape-goat' (but for which he might possibly have lived and died sufficiently orthodox) seems to have been the original cause of his hostility to it, with Shelley the actuating motive was a profound conviction, an over-mastering sympathy with suffering, and a genuine and ardent love of truth. With the one, in fine, a belief in his own personal, with the other a belief in public wrongs appears as the predominating influence—a characteristic difference which, even were we unacquainted with their personal histories, would be sufficiently apparent from the spirit of their respective writings.

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