formed to his happiness. The insult deliberately offered by the Edinburgh Reviewers to individual impulse, upon the appearance of the "Hours of Idleness," was not calculated to improve his opinion of society. The vanity of a poet is peculiarly susceptible to critical severity; but, when the hope of a poet is not founded on vanity, but is derived from the burning aspiration of the mind-the kindling up of the soulthat " flame within," which, says an author already quoted, If not the same,

That kindles poets into faith and fame,

Is a strange something, and without a name;

and which Wordsworth terms, "that faith in individual impulse in which a man is justified;"-and, when the criticism is harsh, unjust, and personal :-then the poet feels all that is noble and excellent in him at once outraged,-and is apt to conceive that the general bosom is perhaps unsusceptible of impressions from those qualities in the few, and deficient of them in itself.

O, Earth! Earth! Earth!

Thou'st nought so pure as toucheth and not seareth
Th' electric chord within the chosen breast;'

6

What music canst thou hope, then, from the crash
Wherewith Disdain oft strikes the tenderest
String of the exquisite spirit, which heaven's flash
'But touches to fine issues?'-Wonderest thou

Its echo should be harsh, and wrathful as thy blow?

Genius hath to contend with envy. The nerves, excited by the electric concussions, with which imagination is ever inflaming the soul, are as tremulously alive to the rude shocks of vulgar calumny or neglect, as to each exquisite impulse by which "fine spirits are touched to fine issues." For the children of genius, the atmosphere of spirits is the only meet region where all the sympathies are spiritual, and no harsh collision jars the string, for which earth hath nought sufficiently gentle to kindle only the soft and delicious music of a heart, whence sorrow's finger may never more elicit accents of disappointment or regret. What harmony, then, can the world expect from the disdainful crash wherewith it striketh the tenderest chord that vibrates in the "chosen breast?"— and yet it affects astonishment that the reply be sometimes discordant, and the echo like a malediction; if, indeed, the chord be not utterly broken, and the subtle instrument that in skilful hands had possessed a magical power-a dulcet enchantment, to which angels might have listened with_delight-be not for ever thereafter inutile and silent, abandoned to the indifference of ruin, or the oblivion of despair.

VOL. 1. PART I.

M

The gross attack on the part of the Reviewers, unsealed the fountain of bitter waters in the heart of Byron. Not content, however, with expressing his resentment towards those who occasioned that very powerful satire, "The English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," he went out of his way to attack the most popular of our poets, and particularly those of the Lake School. The flood-gates were opened,-the waters were out, and inundated the banks and the pleasant fields adjacent. In this, he imitated Pope in his Dunciad. It, however, had been well for both, had they kept within the limits of their theme, and not scattered the baneful drops from their galled pens upon those who had not offended them, and who deserved not such return from men of genius. This was doing unto others, as others did to them; but not as they demanded that others should do. In thus acting, genius mingles at once with the crowd, and profanes that "spark divine" which "descends from heaven to the chosen breast," to characterize and distinguish it from the ignoble many. It was outraging that excellence in another, the outraging of which in themselves had so kindled their indignation. It was shuttingnay, mailing the bosom against those impressions, the want of susceptibility to which, in breasts where they had a right to expect it, had awakened their wrath, and aroused their resentment. The wrath and resentment of the one was a wasp's, the other's, a hornet's. To the credit of our author be it spoken, he discovered his error, and suppressed the publication. But the effect remained on his mind. Rousseau, having experienced in his own person an act of injustice, felt ever after the utmost indignation when he heard or witnessed a similar occurrence, though it was far from restraining him from the like guilt, for which, however, that crazy dreamer, had ever some apology at hand. Byron had seen that power was liable to abuse; he had felt the painful infliction of such abuse, in the perversion of criticism, and the prostitution of the press. But abuse was not confined to that mighty engine, wherever there was power, there was abuse-political-religious. Confounding the accidental perversion with the positive utility of institutions, he would be controlled by none; and accordingly became the sturdy antagonist of power, wherever it was to be found. This perhaps accounts, in a few words, for the discrepancy between his opinions and principles, or rather his sentiments. Democratic in opinion,—yet, we dare not doubt, for a moment, that in no one were the elements of aristocracy more potently combined than in him; his head was with the million, but never his heart,—and his principles, like a pendulum, vascillated between both, but evermore inclined to the latter. Had any great, struggle,

-

any pre-eminent occasion occurred, to make an imperious demand upon his principles, they would at once have decided for the order of his rank and birth. The interest which he felt for Greece was founded upon an aristocratic principle: it was not for modern Greece he felt, but the absence of the ancient glories: the names of illustrious men and deeds were associated with the soil; and, in the veneration felt for such men and such deeds, aristocracy was produced. The ancients converted their great men into heroes and deities; Christian lands established gradations of rank, to testify public gratitude for public services, and made a noble man of him who enacted a noble deed. By the ancestral renown of their country, our poet called upon the Greeks to arise from their national lethargy, to identify themselves with the recollections which hallowed their soil:

"These scenes, their story not unknown,

Arise, and make again your own!"

The classical sentiment, whence this principle proceeds, is well expressed by himself, in the person of 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 framed 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

'Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome;
The trees, which grew along the broken arches,
Waved, dark in the blue midnight, and the stars
Shone through the rents of ruin; from afar
The watch-dog bayed beyond the Tiber; and
More near from out the Cæsars' palace came
The owl's long cry, and, interruptedly,
Of distant sentinels the fitful song
Begun, and died upon the gentle wind.
Some cypresses, beyond the time-worn breach,
Appeared to skirt the horizon, yet they stood
Within a bow-shot-where the Cæsars dwelt,
And dwell the tuneless birds of night, amidst
A grove which springs through levelled battlements,
And twines its roots with the imperial hearths;
Ivy usurps the laurel's place of growth,-
But the gladiator's bloody circus stands
A noble wreck in ruinous perfection!

While Cæsar's chambers, and the Augustan halls,
Grovel on earth in indistinct decay.

And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon
All this; and cast a wide and tender light,
Which softened down the hoar austerity
Of rugged desolation, and filled up
As 'twere, anew, the gaps of centuries;
Leaving that beautiful which still was so,
And making that which was not, till the place
Became religion, and the heart ran o'er
With silent worship of the great of old!

The dead, but sceptered sovereigns, who still rule
Our spirits from their urns."

These remarks apply rather to his political, than to his moral or poetical character. We shall pursue them no further. Our province lies with the man and the poet. With party, and with sect, the Philomathic Institution is unconnected; and our observations are intended only to elucidate the fact, not to pass judgment upon it. We arrive at a poem, by which posterity will decide his character as a poet and moralist. It is in "Childe Harold" that he "soars in the high reason of his fancies, with his garland and singing robes about him." Upon the publication of the two first cantos, the critics insisted that the author had made himself his own hero he protested against such interpretation, but in vain. The original intention of the poet was to have drawn a modern Timon, or perhaps a poetical Zeluco: his choice of such a character was probably determined by the gloom which had been thrown over his opinions from the circumstances in which he was involved, and the treatment he received, operating upon the moody and self-tormenting temperament of capricious and insulted genius, a temper, irritable in the extreme, an obstinate disposition,—and a heart half-withered and broken by disappointed love, and indignant pride. The interpretation of the critics was, moreover, assisted by his having mixed up some of his domestic circumstances in the narrative,—such as the following

:

"Had sighed to many, though he loved but one,
And that loved one, alas! could ne'er be his!

"Childe Harold had a mother, - not forgot,

Though parting from that mother he did shun;
A sister whom he loved, but saw her not,

Before his weary pilgrimage begun."

But, surely, his having lent such trifling details to his fictitious personage, was no reason for charging him with all the

vices, or even all the misanthropy, which were the appropriate characteristics of the Timon, or the Zeluco, he was about to pourtray. He could never have intended to describe himself as

"A youth,

Who ne'er in Virtue's ways did take delight,
But spent his days in riot most uncouth,

And vexed with mirth the drowsy ear of night.

One given to revel and ungodly glee;

Few earthly things found favour in his sight,

Save concubines and carnal companie,

And flaunting wassailers of high and low degree.”

Or, to sum up all, as one, who

"Through Sin's long labyrinth had run,

Nor made atonement when he did amiss."

We know not that the breath of the most malignant calumny has dared to taint him with suspicion of being actually guilty of these things; and, that he never intended to charge himself with them, to say nothing of their probability, is evident from his repeated assertions to the contrary. His was not the disposition to retract; and that fastidiousness constituted no part of his character, which would have induced him to revolt from such exposure, had it been his original purpose to have made it. The fact appears to be, that the character partly embodied his own feelings and qualities, and was partly fictitious. Whatever there is in it noble, and honourable, or sublime, it derived from the poet, whose organ it is; but all its vices are its own,-every thing that was introduced by way of attribute, in order to enforce the moral which the author declares that it was his design to inculcate, namely, "that early perversion of mind and morals leads to satiety of past pleasures, and disappointment in new ones; and that, even the beauties of nature, and the stimulus of travel, (except ambition, the most powerful of all excitements,) are lost on a soul so constituted, or rather misdirected." Hence sentiments are exhibited in connection, which are wholly incongruous, with such a character,-sentiments existent only in the genius of the author, blended with those which had their origin in that northern land, where he first contracted a love for the abrupt aspects of nature,-and

"Made him friends with mountains; with the stars,

And the quick spirit of the universe,

He held his dialogues; and they did teach

To him the magic of their mysteries;

To him the book of Night was opened wide,