which blood had been shed by our fathers; it I saw two beings in the hues of youth ures and excesses-studying by fits and starts at midnight, to maintain the splendour of his reputation. Satiety and disgust succeeded to this round of heartless pleasures, and in a better mood, though without any fixed attachment, he proposed and was accepted in marriage by a northern heiress, Miss Milbanke, daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke, a baronet in the county of Durham. The union cast a shade on his hitherto bright career. A twelvemonth's extravagance, embarrassments, and misunderstandings, dissolved the union, and the lady retired to the country seat of her parents from the discord and perplexity of her own home. She refused, like the wife of Milton, to return, and the world of England seemed to applaud her resolution. One child-afterwards Countess of Lovelace-was the fruit of this unhappy marriage. Before the separation took place, Byron's muse, which had been lulled or deadened by the comparative calm of domestic life, was stimulated to activity by his deepening misfortunes, and he produced the Siege of Corinth and Parisina. Miserable, reckless, yet conscious his own newly-awakened strength, Byron left England We Once more upon the waters, yet once more !— and visiting France and Brussels, pursued his course along the Rhine to Geneva. Here, in six months, he had composed the third canto of Childe Harold, and the Prisoner of Chillon. His mental energy gathered force from the loneliness of his situation, and his disgust with his native This boyish idolatry nursed the spirit of poetry country. The scenery of Switzerland and Italy in Byron's mind. He was recalled, however, next breathed its inspiration: Manfred and the from his day-dreams and disappointment, by his Lament of Tasso were produced in 1817. In the removal to Trinity College, Cambridge, in October following year, whilst residing chiefly at Venice, 1805. At Harrow he had been an idle irregular and making one memorable visit to Rome, he scholar, though he eagerly devoured all sorts of completed Childe Harold, and threw off his light learning excepting that which was prescribed for humorous poem of Beppo, the first-fruits of the him; and at Cambridge he pursued the same more easy and genial manners of the continent on desultory course of study. In 1807 appeared his his excitable temperament. At Venice, and afterfirst volume of poetry, printed at Newark, under wards at Ravenna, Byron resided till 1821, writing the title of Hours of Idleness. There were indica- various works-Mazeppa, the first five cantos of tions of genius in the collection, but many errors Don Juan, and his dramas of Marino Faliero, of taste and judgment. The vulnerable points Sardanapalus, the Two Foscari, Werner, Cain, were fiercely assailed, the merits overlooked, in a the Deformed Transformed, &c. The year 1822 short critique in the Edinburgh Review-under- he passed chiefly at Pisa, continuing Don Juan, stood to be written by Lord Brougham-and the which ultimately extended to sixteen cantos. young poet replied by his vigorous satire, English || have not touched on his private history or indulgBards and Scotch Reviewers, which disarmed, if it ences. At Venice he plunged into the grossest did not discomfit, his opponent. While his excesses, and associated (says Shelley) with name was thus rising in renown, Byron left 'wretches who seemed almost to have lost the England for a course of foreign travel, and in two gait and physiognomy of man.' From this state years visited the classic shores of the Mediter- of debasement he was partly rescued by an attachranean, and resided some time in Greece and ment to a young Romagnese lady of twenty, Turkey. In the spring of 1812 appeared the first recently married to an old and wealthy nobleman, two cantos of Childe Harold, the fruit of his Count Guiccioli. The license of Italian manners foreign wanderings, and his splendidly enriched permitted the intercourse until the lady took the and matured poetical taste. I awoke one morn- bold step of deserting her husband. She was then ing,' he said, and found myself famous.' A rapid thrown upon Byron, and they continued to live succession of eastern tales followed-the Giaour together until the poet departed for Greece. His and the Bride of Abydos in 1813; the Corsair and genius had begun to 'pale its fire: his dramas Lara in 1814. In the Childe, he had shewn his were stiff, declamatory, and undramatic; and the mastery over the complicated Spenserian stanza: successive cantos of Don Juan betrayed the downin these he adopted the heroic couplet, and the ward course of the poet's habits. The wit and lighter verse of Scott, with equal freedom and knowledge of that wonderful poem-its passion, success. No poet had ever more command of the variety, and originality-were now debased with stores of the English language. At this auspicious inferior matter; and the world saw with rejoicing and exultant period, Byron was the idol of the gay the poet break away from his Circean enchantcircles of London. He indulged in all their pleas- ments, and enter upon a new and nobler field of justify. His excesses, especially intemperance, became habitual, and impaired both his genius and his strength. He struggled on with untamed pride and trembling susceptibility, but he had almost exhausted the springs of his poetry and his life; and it is too obvious that the pestilential climate of Missolonghi only accelerated an event which a few years must have consummated in Italy. exertion. He had sympathised deeply with the Italian Carbonari in their efforts for freedom, but a still more interesting country and people claimed his support. His youthful travels and poetical enthusiasm still endeared the 'blue Olympus' to his recollection, and in the summer of 1823 he set sail for Greece, to aid in the struggle for its independence. His arrangements were made with judgment, as well as generosity. Byron knew mankind well, and his plans for the recovery and The genius of Byron was as versatile as it was regeneration of Greece evinced a spirit of patriotic energetic. Childe Harold and Don Juan are freedom and warm sympathy with the oppressed, perhaps the greatest poetical works of this cenhappily tempered with practical wisdom and dis-tury, and in the noble poet's tales and minor cretion. He arrived, after some danger and delay, poems there is a grace, an interest, and romantic at Missolonghi, in Western Greece, on the 4th of picturesqueness, that render them peculiarly fasJanuary 1824. All was discord and confusion-a cinating to youthful readers. The Giaour has military mob and contending chiefs-turbulence, passages of still higher description and feelingrapacity, and fraud. In three months he had done particularly that fine burst on modern Greece much, by his influence and money, to compose contrasted with its ancient glory, and the exdifferences, repress cruelty, and introduce order. quisitely pathetic and beautiful comparison of the His fluctuating and uncertain health, however, same country to the human frame bereft of life : gave way under so severe a discipline. On the 9th of April he was overtaken by a heavy shower whilst taking his daily ride, and an attack of fever and rheumatism followed. Prompt and copious bleeding might have subdued the inflammation, but to this remedy Byron was strongly opposed. It was at length resorted to after seven days of increasing fever, but the disease was then too powerful for remedy. The patient sank into a state of lethargy, and, though conscious of approaching death, could only mutter some indistinct expressions about his wife, his sister, and child. He lay insensible for twenty-four hours, and, opening his eyes for a moment, shut them for ever, and expired on the evening of the 19th of April 1824. The people of Greece publicly mourned for the irreparable loss they had sustained, and the sentiment of grief was soon conveyed to the poet's native country, where his name was still a talisman, and his early death was felt by all as a personal calamity. The body of Byron was brought to England, and after lying in state in London, was interred in the family vault in the village church of Hucknall, near Newstead. Byron has been sometimes compared with Burns. Death and genius have levelled mere external distinctions, and the peer and peasant stand on the same elevation, to meet the gaze and scrutiny of posterity. Both wrote directly from strong personal feelings and impulses; both were the slaves of irregular, uncontrolled passion, and the prey of disappointed hopes and constitutional melancholy; both, by a strange perversity, loved to exaggerate their failings and dwell on their errors; and both died, after a life of extraordinary intellectual activity and excitement, at nearly the same age. We allow for the errors of Burns's position, and Byron's demands a not less tender and candid construction. Neglected in his youth-thwarted in his first love-left without control or domestic influence when his passions were strongest Lord of himself, that heritage of woeintoxicated with early success and the incense of almost universal admiration, his irregularities must be regarded more with pity than reprehension. After his unhappy marriage, the picture is clouded with darker shadows. The wild license of his continental life it would be impossible to Picture of Modern Greece. He who hath bent him o'er the dead, Have swept the lines where beauty lingers, That fires not-wins not-weeps not-now, The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon; A gilded halo hovering round decay, Spark of that flame-perchance of heavenly birthWhich gleams-but warms no more its cherished earth! 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 occurrences, 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 lifelike than any other of his 123 numerous paintings. Haidee is also the most captivating of all his heroines. His Gulnares and Medoras, his Corsairs and dark mysterious personages Linked with one virtue and a thousand crimesare 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 Juan are greatly inferior. There is a palpable falling off in poetical power, and the peculiar prejudices and forced ill-natured satire of the poet are brought prominently 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 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 Mephistophiles 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. He portrays generous emotions and moral feelings-distress, suffering, and pathos-and then dashes them with burlesque humour, wild profanity, and unseasonable mockery. 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 ambition of mankind. The fairest portions of the earth are traversed in a spirit of bitterness and desolation by one satiated with pleasure, contemning society, the victim of a dreary and hopeless scepticism. Such a character would have been repulsive if the poem had not been adorned with the graces of animated description, and original and striking sentiment. The poet's sketches of Spanish and Grecian scenery, and his glimpses of the life and manners of the classic mountaineers, are as true as were ever transferred to canvas; and not less striking are the meditations of the Pilgrim on the particular events which adorned or cursed the soil he trod. Thus, on the field of Albuera, he conjures up a noble image: Red Battle-The Demon of War. Hark! heard you not those hoofs of dreadful note? Red Battle stamps his foot, and nations feel the shock. Lo! where the giant on the mountain stands, Destruction cowers to mark what deeds are done; To shed before his shrine the blood he deems most sweet. In surveying the ruins of Athens, the spirit of Byron soars to its loftiest flight, picturing its fallen glories, and indulging in the most touching and magnificent strain of his sceptical philosophy. Ancient Greece. Ancient of days! august Athena! where, First in the race that led to glory's goal, They won, and passed away-is this the whole? A school-boy's tale, the wonder of an hour! The warrior's weapon, and the sophist's stole, Are sought in vain, and o'er each mouldering tower, Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power. Son of the morning, rise! approach you here! Come, but molest not yon defenceless urn: Look on this spot-a nation's sepulchre ! Abode of gods, whose shrines no longer burn. Even gods must yield-religions take their turn: 'Twas Jove's 'tis Mahomet's-and other creeds Will rise with other years, till man shall learn Vainly his incense soars, his victim bleeds; Poor child of Doubt and Death, whose hope is built on reeds. Bound to the earth, he lifts his eye to heavenIs't not enough, unhappy thing! to know Thou art? Is this a boon so kindly given, That being, thou wouldst be again, and go, Thou know'st not, reck'st not, to what region, so On earth no more, but mingled with the skies? Still wilt thou dream on future joy and woe? Regard and weigh yon dust before it flies: That little urn saith more than thousand homilies. Or burst the vanished hero's lofty mound: Far on the solitary shore he sleeps: He fell, and falling, nations mourned around : But now not one of saddening thousands weeps, Nor warlike worshipper his vigil keeps Where demi-gods appeared, as records tell. Remove yon skull from out the scattered heaps : Is that a temple where a god may dwell? Why, even the worm at last disdains her shattered cell. Look on its broken arch, its ruined wall, Its chambers desolate, and portals foul: Yes, this was once ambition's airy hall, The dome of thought, the palace of the soul: Behold through each lack-lustre eyeless hole, The gay recess of wisdom and of wit, And passion's host, that never brooked control : Can all saint, sage, or sophist ever writ, People this lonely tower, this tenement refit? Well didst thou speak, Athena's wisest son! With brain-born dreams of evil all their own. Pursue what chance or fate proclaimeth best ; Peace waits us on the shores of Acheron : There no forced banquet claims the sated guest, But silence spreads the couch of ever-welcome rest. Yet if, as holiest men have deemed, there be A land of souls beyond that sable shore, To shame the doctrine of the Sadducee And sophists, madly vain of dubious lore, How sweet it were in concert to adore With those who made our mortal labours light! To hear each voice we feared to hear no more! Behold each mighty shade revealed to sight, The Bactrian, Samian sage, and all who taught the right! The third canto of Childe Harold is more deeply imbued with a love of nature than any of his previous productions. A new power had been ́imparted to him on the shores of the Leman lake. He had just escaped from the strife of London and his own domestic unhappiness, and his conversations with Shelley might have turned him more strongly to this pure poetical source. The poetry of Wordsworth had also unconsciously lent its influence. An evening scene by the side of the lake is thus exquisitely described: Lake Leman (Geneva). Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake, To waft me from distraction; once I loved That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved. It is the hush of night; and all between He is an evening reveller, who makes Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven! A forcible contrast to this still scene is then given in a brief description of the same landscape during a thunder-storm: The sky is changed!—and such a change! O night, And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong, Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light Of a dark eye in woman! Far along From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, Leaps the live thunder! not from one lone cloud, But every mountain now hath found a tongue, And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud! And this is in the night: most glorious night! Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be A sharer in thy fierce and far delightA portion of the tempest and of thee! How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea, And the big rain comes dancing to the earth! And now again 'tis black-and now the glee Of the loud hill shakes with its mountain-mirth, As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth. In the fourth canto there is a greater throng of images and objects. The poet opens with a sketch of the peculiar beauty and departed greatness of Venice, rising from the sea, with her tiara of proud towers' in airy distance. He then resumes trarch and Tasso, Dante and Boccaccio-and his pilgrimage-moralises on the scenes of Pevisits the lake of Thrasimene and the temple of Clitumnus. Temple of Clitumnus. But thou, Clitumnus! in thy sweetest wave Of the most living crystal that was e'er The haunt of river-nymph, to gaze and lave And most serene of aspect and most clear! A mirror and a bath for Beauty's youngest daughters! And on thy happy shore a temple still, Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps The Greek statues at Florence are then inimitably described, after which the poet visits Rome, and revels in the ruins of the Palatine and Coliseum, and the glorious remains of ancient art. We give two of these portraitures : Statue of Apollo. Or view the Lord of the unerring bow, The God of life, and poesy, and lightThe Sun in human limbs arrayed, and brow All radiant from his triumph in the fight; The shaft hath just been shot-the arrow bright With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye And nostril beautiful disdain, and might And majesty, flash their full lightnings by, Developing in that one glance the Deity. But in his delicate form-a dream of Love, All that ideal beauty ever blessed The mind within its most unearthly mood, When each conception was a heavenly guestA ray of immortality-and stood Starlike, around, until they gathered to a god! The Gladiator. I see before me the gladiator lie: He leans upon his hand; his manly brow Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won. He heard it, but he heeded not; his eyes All this rushed with his blood. Shall he expire, And unavenged? Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire! The poem concludes abruptly with an apostrophe to the sea, his joy of youthful sports,' and a source of lofty enthusiasm and pleasure in his solitary wanderings on the shores of Italy and Greece. Apostrophe to the Ocean. There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar ; I love not man the less, but nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the universe, and feel What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal. Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean-roll! His steps are not upon thy paths-thy fields For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, And dashest him again to earth: there let him lay. The armaments which thunder-strike the walls Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee- Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy An Italian Evening on the Banks of the Brenta. The moon is up, and yet it is not night- A single star is at her side, and reigns Filled with the face of heaven, which, from afar, And now they change; a paler shadow strews The last still loveliest, till-'tis gone-and all is gray. Midnight Scene in Rome.-From Manfred. The stars are forth, the moon above the tops Of the snow-shining mountains. Beautiful! I linger yet with Nature, for the night Hath been to me a more familiar face Than that of man; and in her starry shade Of dim and solitary loveliness, I learned the language of another world. I do remember me, that in my youth, When I was wandering, upon such a night I stood within the Coliseum's wall, |