youth, when he wrote his Hours of Idleness, was as fearless, hostile, or full of defiance against all mankind as when he wrote Don Juan, or that if it were so he purposely concealed these traits from fear of revealing them; but doubtless the germs of his hostility and of his misanthropy were born with him, which germs Lord Jeffrey first, and the world at large subsequently, called forth so conspicuously to view.

It would be hard to make us say that he were born with an original propensity to evil, though some have said as much. He was born with strong passions, the which led him into evil, because his moral education had been too deficient to act as a wholesome curb against the temptations by which, not only himself, but every one else is more or less surrounded. Much has been said of his profligacy, and the cicerone who takes the visitor round Venice has many anecdotes in point. The common idea amongst the generality of people is, that poets are the purest of human beings, because they write passages of exalted beauty, tingling fire, and lofty sublimity. We could easily show that this idea is very erroneous. What, for instance, is the power that enables them to pen these passages? Why, the having stronger passions than other men. To be as pure, then, as they are intense, their moral culture ought to be even more strictly attended to than it need be in your frigid stoics whom nothing can excite. It is the most mettlesome steed that requires the strongest curb, and it is the most ardent temperaments that need the greatest care to prevent their running into excesses.

The

Some imagine that the elements of the poetic temperament are the elements of celestiality, but this is not always the case. poetic temperament consists in intensity; it is, in fact, a quintessence; without cautious guiding, therefore, it may run into the quintessence of evil, instead of into the quintessence of good. Some poetic minds have a spontaneous propendency upwards towards spirituality, and all who are the sires of verse would have us fancy that their stanzas were conceived in heaven, though one glance at the ungodly offspring may assure us far otherwise.

The majority of poets in all ages have been noted for their devotion either to Venus or to Bacchus, or both. Why? Is it that as a class of human beings they must necessarily be more depraved than others? must they be more licentious, more wanton, more abandoned? Not so. It is that the impassioned cast of their temperaments in their early youth not having been sufficiently watched over by some guardian good, has plunged into the revels of impurity, though a guiding hand in time might have turned that same impetuousness into a more refined channel. There would then have been less of earth, and more of heaven; less of materiality, and more of idealism.

Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, met Southey once in the north of

England, and expressed his surprise that the latter would not address himself to Bacchus with the same devotion for which Hogg was somewhat noted.

"For a poet," said the shepherd, "to refuse his glass was to me a phenomenon; and I confess I doubted my own mind, and doubt it to this day, if perfect sobriety and transcendant genius can exist together."

This passage may astonish some who associate far other notions with the poetic temperament. Hogg continues,

"In Scotland I am sure they cannot; with regard to the English, I shall let them settle that among themselves, as they have little that is worth drinking."

Here was a compliment to an Englishman's sobriety!

Many of those, too, who carry this admiration of poets to an enthusiastic pitch, judging of them from the tender touches pencilled over their writings, would exalt them in apotheosis to the skies, and never believe otherwise than that those who can so well portray what virtue and sweetness are, must indeed be virtue and sweetness themselves. We would that this were a rule without an exception. Many of the finest poets that have lived, whether in this country or in others, have been known to be, to their intimates, prone to quarrel, quick at irrascibility, and impetuous to revenge. Shakspere* always stands conspicuous for his amiability, though, as a poet, he lacked nothing of fire and passion. Beaumont and Fletcher were good fellows, and agreed admirably. Ben Johnson was apt at quarrel; Milton was morose; Dryden was servile and like-minded; Matthew Prior was a social and hearty companion; John Gay was noted for his affability and pleasing manners; Handel, one of the great poets of music, was rough and impetuous in his manner; Goldsmith could easily fly into a passion with those around him, but he could easily forgive; Johnson was coarse and ungentle; Sheridan was licentious; Campbell was hasty, and packed bottles of whiskey in his trunks when he travelled; Byron had a temper or two besides his own; Macready has his own temper, which is quite enough; Douglas Jerrold is captious; and--but this will do for the present.

We may here learn that it is not always that those who can write passages the most refined are themselves the purest; not those who are the sweetest and loftiest on paper are the sweetest and loftiest in heart, nor those who are the fairest to read are inwardly the fairest to be read. Had Lord Byron been as great a moralist as he was a poet, he would never have been excluded from Westminster Abbey.

* We know not how to spell William of Stratford's name. We thought Mr. Charles Knight had set the controversy at rest, on the authority of some authentic autographs of the poet, but the Quarterly for June, 1844, laughs it all to scorn. Is there no peace in this world?

The statue of Shakspere in Poet's Corner had been anxiously looking out to see what would be done with Thorwaldsen's figure, immediately after the discussion which took place on this subject in the House of Lords on Friday, the 14th of June, 1844. The Swan of Avon watched its disinterment from under the foundations of the Custom House with some interest-we had almost said its deracination, for it was a hard tug to drag it thence, after it had rooted there for twelve years. He kept his eye upon it during its temporary sojourn in South Audley Street, and finally saw it pass Kensal Green, and find harbourage at the upper end of the library in Trinity College, Cambridge.

"Certes, my lord," it then said, with a feeling of satisfaction. "Certes, ye have ambled far, though ye took it by easy roads. Howbeit, I now give ye joy of your stance, for ye are set upon as fitting a pedestal as might well have been devised."

"Do you think so, Shakspere?" sadly said the stove in the library."

"Ay, marry, I do; and wherefore not ?"

"True; wherefore not? I have certainly many pleasing reminiscences of Cambridge; I hope I had many friends there, and, as a literary man, perhaps the being placed in the midst of these book-shelves is not inappropriate, as you observe. But-eh-but somehow or other I always had a great desire for a place in Poet's Corner, and

"I wot well," cried Shakspere. "Yes, my lord, ye did much desiderate that, I know; but this was vanity, mere vanity, one of your weaknesses, however. Ye also had another wish-to wit, the Poet Laureateship. This was vanity, too. But let me tell ye a plain unvarnished 'truth :-ye went altogether the wrong way to attain either of these honours. Ye were a bad politician and a purblind diplomatist.

"I? How? Who made you a judge of that?"

"Go to, my lord, I say you were. Meseemeth that he who could sit down and write The vision of Judgment' (I shall say nothing of the sinner that printed it), and he who lost no opportunity of cursing kings, could scantly look for the laurel crown till his hands of his sovereign. Neither do I think that he who, till his death, made one jeer of religion, went the right way towards getting a niche in this abbey. Come now, what think ye?" Well, there may be something in that. But my friend, Bob Southey, was a republican in his youth, and yet he got the laurel."

66

"But Bob Southey, as ye call him, was not so personal in his republicanism; he did not abuse the same prince that he got the crown from, though his principles were then unfavourable to monarchy. A man's principles will be forgiven by his antagonists if his effusions are not personal. Legh Hunt could be personal

in his republicanism, and yet the hoary old sinner could now turn round and write a sycophantic panegyric on the birth of the princess Alice. This offence smelt to heaven; and let me tell ye, it offended nostrils that inhale the perfume of palaces. What was worse, at that very time his ancient comrade, Southey, was lying well-nigh on his death-bed, and that same laurel crown likely to become vacant every day. I was ashamed of human nature when I witnessed this."

"Rather bad, I allow," returned Lord Byron; "but what do you think of my statue?"

"By'r lady, 'tis beautiful!" replied Shakspere. "I will not say ye are perfect, for your feet are bad, and your right leg is of feminine mould, and faultily fashioned; but I will not look for errors, as this is too much the practice now-a-days with those who criticise new works. Ye had good hands when ye were alive [aside-and ye were proud of them], but your sculptor has done ye justice. Your eye is not in a fine frenzy rolling; your brow is more calmly contemplative, and peradventure this is more pleasing"

"I am glad you like me altogether. By the bye, Shakspere, you are very different from your bust in Stratford Church, which has been recently cleaned up by Mr. Harness. Which, now, most resembles what you were in your lifetime ?"

"An a man could hold a mirror up to himself," answered the figure in the Abbey, "I might tell ye: but it's hard for a man to know his own features. The eye cannot see itself. Howbeit, I say the one at Stratford-as far as my remembrance serves, and especially before it had been besmirched with whitewash, when it was painted all in the true colours of my habit and complexion. They affect whitewash not a little at Stratford, for in a fit of spleen they whitewashed the chamber wherein I was born, and obliterated all the pencilled names on the walls, not sparing your lordship's, nor yet the Duke of Clarence's, near the re-place. The old widow, Mistress Court, makes a good thing of my fame. She has got the chinks there."

"I doubt it not. It cost me something when I went up stairs. But, Shakspere, I wish to come back to that topic again about the merits of getting into the corner. You say I was not good enough. But how did you get there? Even you were not a pattern of what is correct. You remember the deer stealing in Charlecotte Park, the impending law suit, and your unchristian revenge in the squibs you penned against Sir Thomas Lucy? Neither did your revenge die, for you subsequently had a fling at him in the beginning of your 'Merry Wives of Windsor.' It would be well for your fair fame if this were all; but I fear me that your acquaintance with Ann Hathaway was not what it should have been. You know you were obliged to marry her in a hurry; the banns were

only called once in church, and six months after the knot was tied she presented you with a little daughter. Come, now, William, you must allow that that was not right."

"Oh!-ah! well-perhaps exactly-(Aside-how provoking. I was in hopes all that had been forgotten long ago). The fact is, my lord, I can't precisely say how this happened; I was rather warm."

"Exactly-as you say. Come, I have you there. And yet you are in the Abbey."

"I readily confess I was not without sin-far from it; but I think ye will at least concede that my words inculcate virtue, and are not without a reverence for religion, albeit I myself had not strength enough always to resist error and keep in the right path. This is something, Not so you, my lord-your works are pernicious. If I am gross in any expressions I may use, I out with it at once, without inuendo; and this grossness is to be laid down more to the imperfectly refined age in which I lived, than to my own depravity. Your scenes of profligacy, so well described, are glazed over with polished periods, whereby the innocent see not the dangers they are treading upon. Your surpassing talent rivets the attention, urges the reader delightfully to go on, but the under-current of pernicious inuendo is fearfully calculated to seduce unsuspecting virtue."

"Thank you for your compliment."

66

Nay, my lord, I speak not to offend, and sorely engrieved should I be to do so. We statues have vast privileges; we may say what we like, and as no offence is meant, so none should be taken."

"Well, go on," said Byron, not, however, in the best of humours.

"I was simply about to make an observation or two on the unfitness of admitting your statue into Westminster Abbey- a topic which would not be out of place, as ye have so recently found a resting-place, after being denied one here. This matter of admittance was canvassed in the House of Lords, as I said. by the pure chance of hazard, by the Earl Fitzhardinge making answer to the Bishop of Exeter, when another subject was abroach. The noble earl observed,

It arose

"It would be recollected that the Dean and Chapter of Westminster had refused a place in Westminster Abbey, on the score of morals and religion, a statue to Lord Byron. He did not quarrel with them for that decision, if they really believed that the reception of it would be injurious to morals or religion,' &c.

"After that my Lord Bishop of Gloucester spoke, and he right vehemently upheld all that the dean and chapter had done in keeping you out.

Then my Lord Brougham stood forward, and most robus