land, an involuntary exile, intending it should their means of generosity, hospitality, and pabe for ever. tronage. He had the will, alas! without the We shall here avail ourselves of some obser vations by a powerful and elegant critic,' whose opinions on the personal character of Lord Byron, as well as on the merits of his poems, are, from their originality, candour, and keen discrimination, of considerable weight. The charge against Lord Byron,» says this writer, is, not that he fell a victim to excessive temptations, and a combination of cir| cumstances, which it required a rare and extraordinary degree of virtue, wisdom, prudence, and steadiness to surmount; but that he abandoned a situation of uncommon advantages, and fell weakly, pusillanimously, and selfishly, when victory would have been easy, and when defeat was ignominious. In reply to this charge, I do not deny that Lord Byron inherited some very desirable, and even enviable privileges in the lot of life which fell to his share. I should falsify my own sentiments if I treated lightly the gift of an ancient English peerage, and a name of bonour and venerable antiquity; but without a fortune competent to that rank, it is not a bed of roses, nay, it is attended with many and ex'treme difficulties, and the difficulties are exactly such as a genius and temper like Lord Byron's were least calculated to meet; at any rate, least calculated to meet under the peculiar collateral circumstances in which he was placed. His income was very narrow; his Newstead property left him a very small disposable surplus; his Lancashire property was, in its condition, etc. unproductive. A profession, such as the army, might have lessened, or almost annihilated the * difficulties of his peculiar position; but probably | his lameness rendered this impossible. He seems to have had a love of independence, which was I noble, and probably even an intractability; but | this temper added to his indisposition to bend and adapt himself to his lot. A dull, or supple, or intriguing man, without a single good quality of head or heart, might have managed it much better; he might have made himself subservient to government, and wormed himself into some , lucrative place; or he might have lived meanly, conformed himself stupidly or cringingly to all humours, and been borne onward on the wings of society with little personal expense. - Lord Byron was of another quality and temperament. If the world would not conform to him, still less would he conform to the world. He had all the manly, baronial pride of his ancestors, though he had not all their wealth, and * Sir Egerton Brydges, Bart. who has written so diffusely and so ably on Lord Byron's genius and character. power. With this temper, these feelings, this genius, exposed to a combination of such untoward and trying circumstances, it would indeed have been inimitably praise-worthy if Lord Byron could have been always wise, prudent, calm, correct, pure, virtuous, and unassailable: if he could have shown all the force and splendour of his mighty poetical energies, without any mixture of their clouds, their baneful lightnings, or their storms:-if he could have preserved all his sensibility to every kind and noble passion, yet have remained placid, and unaffected by the attack of any blameable emotion; — that is, it would have been admirable if he had been an angel, and not a man! Unhappily, the outrages he received, the gross calumnies which were heaped upon him, even in the time of his highest favour with the public, turned the delights of his very days of triumph to poison, and gave him a sort of moody, fierce, and violent despair, which led to humours, acts, and words, that mutually aggravated the ill will and the offences between him and his assailants. There was a daring spirit in his temper and his talents, which was always inflamed rather than corrected by opposition.» « In this most unpropitious state of things, every thing that went wrong was attributed to Lord Byron, and, when once attributed, was assumed and argued upon as an undeniable fact. Yet, to my mind, it is quite clear, — quite unattended by a particle of doubt, — that in many things in which he has been the most blamed, he was the absolute victim of misfortune; that unpropitious trains of events (for I do not wish to shift the blame on others) led to explosions and consequent derangements, which no cold prudent pretender to extreme propriety and correctness could have averted or met in a manner less blameable than that in which Lord Byron met it. 巍 It is not easy to conceive a character less fitted to conciliate general society by his manners and habits than that of Lord Byron. It is probable that he could make his address and conversation pleasing to ladies when he chose to please; but, to the young dandies of fashion, noble and iguoble, he must have been very repulsive: as long as he continued to be the ton,—the lion, they may have endured him without opening their mouths, because he had a frown and a Jash which they were not willing to encounter; but when his back was turned, and they thought it safe, I do not doubt that they burst out into full cry! I have heard complaints of his vanity, his peevishness, his desire to monopolize distinction, C his dislike of all hobbies but his own. It is not improbable that there may have been some foundation for these complaints: I am sorry for it if there was; I regret such littlenesses. And then another part of the story is probably left untold: we hear nothing of the provocations given him; -sly hints, curve of the lip, side looks, treacherous smiles, flings at poetry, shrugs at noble authors, slang jokes, idiotic bets, enigmatical appointments, and boasts of being senseless brutes! We do not hear repeated the jest of the glory of the Jew, that buys the ruined peer's falling castle; the d-d good fellow, that keeps the finest stud and the best hounds in the country out of the snippings and odds and ends of his contract; and the famous good match that the duke's daughter is going to make with Dick Wigly, the son of the rich slave merchant at Liverpool! We do not hear the clever dry jests whispered round the table by Mr——, eldest son of the new and rich | Lord, by young Mr--, only sou of Lord-, the ex-lords A., B., and C., sons of the three Irish Union earls, great borough-holders, and the very grave and sarcastic Lord, who believes that he has the monopoly of all the talents and all the political and legislative knowledge of the kingdom, and that a poet and a bellman are only fit to be yoked together! Thus, then, was this illustrious and mighty poet driven into exile! Yes, driven! who would live in a country in which he had been so used, even though it was the land of his nativity, the land of a thousand noble ancestors, the land of freedom, the land where his head had been crowned with laurels,-but where his heart had been tortured, where all his most generous and most noble thoughts had been distorted and rendered ugly, and where his slightest errors and indiscretions had been magnified into hideous crimes." Lord Byron's own opinions on the connubial state are thus related by Captain Parry: dwell under the same roof with a woman, who is to him, because he knows her, while others do not, an object of loathing? Can any thing be more monstrous than for the public voice to compel individuals who dislike each other to continue their cohabitation? This is at least the effect of its interfering with a relationship, of which it has no possible means of judging. It does not indeed drag a man to a woman's bed by physical force; but it does exert a moral force continually and effectively to accomplish the same purpose. Nobody can escape this force but those who are too high, or those who are too low, for public opinion to reach; or those hypocrites who are, before others, the loudest in their approbation of the empty and unmeaning forms of society, that they may securely indulge all their propensities in secret. I have suffered amazingly from this interference; for though I set it at defiance, I was neither too high nor too low to be reached by it, and I was not hypocrite enough to guard myself from its consequences. What do they say of my family affairs in England, Parry? My story, I suppose, like other minor events, interested the people for a day, and was then forgotten ?» I replied, no; 1 thought, owing to the very great interest the public took in him, it was still remembered and talked about. I mentioned that it was generally supposed a difference of religious sentiments between him and Lady Byron had caused the public breach. « No, Parry,» was the reply; ▪ Lady Byron has a liberal mind, particularly as to religious opinions; and I wish, when I married her, that I had possessed the same command over myself that I now do. Had I possessed a little more wisdom, and more forbearance, we might have been happy. I wished, when I was first married, to have remained in the country, particularly till my pecuniary embarrassments were over. I knew the society of London; I knew the characters of many of those who are called ladies, with whom Lady Byron would necessarily have to associate, and I dreaded her contact with them. But I have too much of my mother about me to be dictated to: I like freedom from constraint; I hate arti «There are," said his lordship, so many undefinable, and nameless, and not-to-be named causes of dislike, aversion, and disgust, in the matrimonial state, that it is always impossible for the public, or the best friends of the parties, toficial regulations: my conduct has always been judge between man and wife. Theirs is a relation about which nobody but themselves can form a correct idea, or have any right to speak. As long as neither party commits gross injustice towards the other; as long as neither the woman nor the man is guilty of any offence which is injurious to the community; as long as the husband provides for his offspring, and secures the public against the dangers arising from their neglected education, or from the charge of supporting them; by what right does it censure him for ceasing to dictated by my own feelings, and Lady Byron was quite the creature of rules. She was not permitted either to ride, or run, or walk, but as the physician prescribed. She was not suffered to go out when I wished to go; and then the old house was a mere ghost-house; I dreamed of ghosts, and thought of them waking. It was an existence I could not support. Here Lord Byron broke off abruptly, saying, I hate to speak of my family affairs; though I have been compelled to talk nonsense cencerning them to some of my butterfly visitors, glad on any terms to get rid of their importunities. I long to be again on the mountains. I am fond of solitude, and should never talk nonsense if I always found plain men to talk to.. of my boatman and boat? I suppose she is rotten; she was never worth much. When I went the tour of the lake in her with Shelley and Hobhouse, she was nearly wrecked near the very spot where Saint-Preux and Julia were in danger of In the spring of 1816, Lord Byron quitted being drowned. It would have been classical to England, to return to it no more. He crossed have been lost there, but not so agreeable. Shelover to France, through which he passed rapidlyley was on the lake much oftener than 1, at all to Brussels, taking in his way a survey of the field of Waterloo. He then proceeded to Coblentz, and up the Rhine to Basle. He passed the summer on the banks of the Geneva lake. With what enthusiasm he enjoyed, and with what contem!plations he dwelt among its scenery, his own poetry soon exhibited to the world. His third canto of Childe Harold, his Manfred, and his Prisoner of Chillon were composed at the Campagne Diodati, at Coliguy, a mile from Geneva. These productions evidently proved that the unfortunate events which had induced Lord Byron to become a voluntary exile from his native land, however they might have exacerbated his feelings, had in no measure chilled his poetical fire. The anecdotes that follow are given as his lordship related them to Captain Medwin:— hours of the night and day: he almost lived on it; his great rage is a boat. We are both building now at Genoa, I a yacht, and he an open boat. >> Somebody possessed Madame de Stael with an opinion of my immorality. I used occasionally to visit her at Coppet; and once she invited me to a family-dinner, and I found the room full of strangers, who had come to stare at me as at some outlandish beast in a raree-show. One of the ladies fainted, and the rest looked as if his satanic majesty had been among them. Madame de Stael took the liberty to read me a lecture before this crowd, to which I only made her a low bow.» His lordship's travelling equipage was rather a singular one, and afforded a strange catalogue for the Dogana: seven servants, five carriages, nine horses, a monkey, a bull-dog and mastiff, two cats, three pea-fowls and some hens (I do not know whether I have classed them in order of rank), formed part of his live stock; these, and al! his books, consisting of a very large library of modern works (for he bought all the best that came out), together with a vast quantity of furniture, might well be termed, with Cæsar, « impediments.» ⚫ Switzerland is a country I have been satisfied › with seeing once; Turkey I could live in for ever. I never forget my predilections. I was in a wretched state of health, and worse spirits, when I was at Geneva; but quiet and the lake, physicians better than Polidori, soon set me up. I never led so moral a life as during my residence in that country; but I gained no credit by it. Where there is a mortification, there ought to be reward. On the contrary, there is no story so almurd that they did not invent at my cost. was watched by glasses on the opposite side of the lake, and by glasses too that must have had very distorted optics. I was waylaid in my even-himself in poetical composition with an energy |ing drives—I was accused of corrupting all the grettes in the rue Basse, I believe that they looked upon me as a man-monster worse than the piqueur.» I 1 knew very few of the Genevese. Hentsh was very civil to me; and I have a great respect for Sismondi. I was forced to return the civilities of one of their professors by asking him, and an uld gentleman, a friend of Gray's, to dine with me. I had gone out to sail early in the morning, and the wind prevented me from returning in time for dinner. I understand that I offended them mortally. Polidori did the honours. . Among our countrymen I made no new acquaintances; Shelley, Monk Lewis, and Hobhouse were almost the only English people I saw. No wonder; I showed a distaste for society at that me, and went little among the Genevese; besides, I could not speak French. What is become From about the commencement of the year 1817 to that of 1820, Lord Byron's principal residence was Venice. Here he continued to employ still increasing. He wrote the Lament of Tasso, the fourth canto of Childe Harold, the dramas of Marino Faliero, and the Two Foscari; Beppo, Mazeppa, and the earlier cantos of Don Juan, etc. Considering these only with regard to intellectual activity and force, there can be no difference of opinion; though there may be as to their degree of poetical excellence, the class in the scale of literary merit to which they belong, and their moral, religious, and political tendencies. The Lament of Tasso, which in every line abounds in the most perfect poetry, is liable to no countervailing objection on the part of the moralist. In the third canto of the « Pilgrimage, the discontented and repining spirit of Harold had already become much softened : Joy was not always absent from his face, Manfred was the first of Lord Byron's dramatic poerns, and, we think, the finest. The spirit of his genius seems there wrestling with the spirit of his nature, the struggle being for the palm of sublimity. Manfred has always appeared to us one of the most genuine creations of the noble bard's mind. The melancholy is more heartfelt: the poet does not here seem to scowl his brows, but they drop under the weight of his thoughts; his intellect, too, is strongly at work in it, and the stern haughtiness of the principal character is altogether of an intellectual cast: ception of this character is Miltonic. The poet has made him worthy to abide amongst those palaces of nature, those icy halls,» « where forms and fails the avalanche.» Manfred stands up against the stupendous scenery of the poem, and is as lofty, towering, and grand as the moun the con He is a being of still gentler mould in the fourth canto; his despair has even sometimes assumed a smilingness, and the lovely and lively creations of the poet's brain are less painfully alloyed, and less suddenly checked by the gloomy visions of a morbid imagination. He represented himself, from the beginning, as a ruin; and when we first gazed upon him, we saw indeed in abundance the black traces of recent violence and convulsion. The edifice was not rebuilt; but its hues were softened by the passing wings of Time, and the calm slow ivy had found leisure to wreath the soft green of its melancholy among the fragments of the decay. In so far the pilgrim became wiser, as he seemed to think more of others, and with a greater spirit of humanity. There was something fiendish in the air with which he surveyed the first scene of his wanderings; and no proof of the strength of genius was ever exhi-tains: when we picture him in imagination he bited so strong and unquestionable as the sudden and entire possession of the minds of men by such a being as he then appeared to be. He looked upon a bull-fight and a field of battle with no variety of emotion. Brutes and men were, in his eyes, the same blind, stupid victims of the savage lust of power. He seemed to shut his eyes to every thing of that citizenship and patriotism which ennobles the spirit of the soldier, and to delight in scattering the dust and ashes of his derision over all the most sacred resting-places of the soul of man. Even then, we must allow, the original spirit of the Englishman and the poet broke triumphantly, at times, through the chilling mist in which it had been spontaneously enveloped. In Greece, above all, the contemplation of Actium, Salamis, Marathon, Thermopylæ, and Platæa subdued the prejudices of him who had gazed unmoved, or with disdain, upon fields of more recent glory. The nobility of manhood appeared to delight this moody visitant; and he accorded, without reluctance, to the shades of long departed heroes that reverent homage which, in the strange mixture of envy and scorn wherewith the contemplative so often regard active men, he had refused to the living, or to the newly dead. But there would be no end of descanting on the He wore his sandal-shoon and scallop-shell; Alas! we must now say farewell for ever. assumes a shape of height and independent dignity, shining in its own splendour amongst the snowy summits which he was accustomed to climb. The passion, too, in this composition, is fervid and impetuous, but at the same time deep and full, which is not always the case in Byron's productions; it is serious and sincere throughout. The music of the language is as solemn and as touching as that of the wind coming through the bending ranks of the inaccessible Alpine forests; and the mists and vapours rolling down the gullies and ravines that yawn horribly on the eye, are not more wild and striking in their ap pearance than are the supernatural creations of the poet's faucy, whose magical agency is of mighty import, but is nevertheless continually surmounted by the high intellectual power, invincible will, and intrepid philosophy of Manfred. The first idea of the descriptive passages of this beautiful poem will be easily recognised in the following extract from Lord Byron's travelling memorandum-book. Sept. 22, 1816. Left Thun in a boat, which carried us the length of this lake in three hours. The lake small, but the banks fine-rocks down to the water's edge-landed at Newhouse. Passed Interlachen-eutered upon a range of scenes beyond all description or previous conception. Passed a rock bearing an inscription—two brothers-one murdered the other-just the place for it. After a variety of windings came to an enormous rock-arrived at the foot of the mountain (the Jungfraw)-glaciers-torrents-one of these goo feet visible descent-lodge at the curate's-set out to see the valley-heard an avalanche fall, like thunder!-glaciers enormousstorm comes on-thunder and lightning, and hail! all in perfection and beautiful. The tor rent is in shape, curving over the rock, like the tail of the white horse streaming in the windjust as might be conceived would be that of the | Pale Horse,' on which Death is mounted in the I apocalypse. It is neither mist nor water, but a something between both; its immense height ¦ gives it a wave, a curve, a spreading here, a condension there-wonderful—indescribable. tained, and the proprietor reduced with a large family to the greatest indigence and want. When Lord Byron ascertained the afflicting circumstances of that calamity, he not only ordered a new and superior habitation to be immediately built for the sufferer, the whole expense of which was borne by his lordship, but also presented the unfortunate 'tradesman with a sum equal in value to the whole of his lost stock in trade and furniture. Lord Byron avoided as much as possible any intercourse with his countrymen at Venice; this seems to have been in a great measure necessary, in order to prevent the intrusion of impertinent curiosity. In an appendix to one of his poems, written with reference to a book of travels, the author of which disclaimed any wish to be introduced to the noble lord, he loftily and sar Sept. 23. Ascent of the Wingren, the dent argent shining like truth on one side, on the other the clouds rose from the opposite valley, , curling up perpendicular precipices, like the foam of the ocean of hell during a spring tide! It was white and sulphury, and immeasurably deep in appearance. The side we ascended was of course not of so precipitous a nature, but on arriving at the summit we looked down on the other side upon a boiling sea of cloud, dashing against the crag on which we stood. Arrived at the Green-castically chastises the incivility of such a graderwold; mounted and rode to the higher gla- tuitous declaration, expresses his « utter abhortier-twilight, but distinct-very fine-glacier rence of any contact with the travelling English ; » like a frozen hurricane-starlight beautiful--the and thus concludes: « Except Lords Lansdowne, whole of the day was fine, and in point of wea- Jersey, and Lauderdale, Messrs. Scott, Hammond, ther, as the day in which Paradise was made. Sir Humphrey Davey, the late Mr Lewis, W. Passed whole woods of withered pines-all wi- Bankes, M. Hoppner, Thomas Moore, Lord Kinthered-tranks stripped and lifeless-done by a naird, his brother, Mr Joy, and Mr Hobhouse, Engle winter.. I do not recollect to have exchanged a word with another Englishman since I left their country, and almost all these I had known before. The others, and God knows there were some hun Of Lord Byron's tragedies we shall merely remark, with reference to the particular nature of their tragic character, that the effect of them all is rather grand, terrible, and terrific, than mol-dreds who bored me with letters or visits, I relifving, subduing, or pathetic. As dramatic poems they possess much beauty and originality. fused to have any communication with; and shall be proud and happy when that wish becomes mutual.»> After a residence of three years at Venice, Lord Byron removed to Ravenna, towards the close of the year 1819. Here he wrote the Prophecy of Dante, which exhibited a new specimen of the astonishing variety of strength and expansion of faculties he possessed and exercised. About the same time he wrote Sardanapalus, a tragedy, Cain, a mystery, and Heaven and Earth, a mystery. Though there are some obvious reasons which render Sardanapalus unfit for the English stage, it is, on the whole, the most splendid specimen which our language affords of that species of tragedy which was the exclusive object of Lord Byron's admiration. Cain is one of the productions which has subjected its noble The style and nature of the poem of Don Juan forms a singularly felicitous mixture of burlesque and pathos, of humorous observation and the higher elements of poetical composition. Never was the English language festooned into more luxurious stanzas than in Don Juan: like the dolphin sporting in its native waves, at every turn, however grotesque, displaying a new hue and a new beauty, so the noble author there shows an absolute control over his means, and at every cadence, rhyme, or construction, however whimsical, delights us with novel and mamical associations. We wish, we heartily wish, that the fine poetry which is so richly scattered through the sixteen cantos of this most original and most astonishing production, had not been mited up with very much that is equally frivo-author to the severest denunciations, on account lons as foolish; and sincerely do we regret that the alloying dross of sensuality should run so freely through the otherwise rich vein of the author's verse. Whilst at Venice, Byron displayed a most noble instance of generosity. The house of a shoemaker, sear his lordship's residence in St Samuel, was brat to the ground, with every article it con of the crime of impiety alleged against it; it seems to have a tendency to call in question the benevolence of Providence. In answer to the loud and general outcry which this production occasioned, Lord Byron observed, in a letter to his publisher, If Cain' be blasphemous, 'Paradise Lost' is blasphemous, and the words of the Oxford gentleman, Evil, be thou my good,' |