his ambition, and is left, a solitary childless wretch, to endure, for the remainder of his declining life, the incessant reproaches of a guilty conscience. In lieu of this odious picture Lord Byron has borrowed, we know not whether from some eastern legend, or from his own invention, a little fabulous incident which forms a far more graceful and appropriate conclusion to the poem. XXVIII. 'Within the place of thousand tombs And withers not, though branch and leaf So white-so faint-the slightest gale And yet, though storms and blight assail, The stalk some spirit gently rears, And waters with celestial tears. For well may maids of Helle deem That this can be no earthly flower, Which mocks the tempest's withering hour Nor droops-though spring refuse her shower This miraculous rose springs, of course, from the virgin grave of Zuleika; and it seems that the feathered Selim has taken care that her remains shall not be decorated with any more vulgar ornament. 'There late was laid a marble stone, Eve saw it placed-the Morrow gone! Next morn 'twas found,where Selim fell- Where Where first it lay-that mourning flower As weeping Beauty's cheek, at Sorrow's tale!'-pp. 59, 60. Having devoted so much time to the contents of these poems, we have little to add by way of comment. The public, we think, are seldom very culpably prodigal of their admiration, and the almost universal, though not quite unqualified applause with which the poetical compositions of Lord Byron have been received, affords, in our judgment, an undeniable proof of his distinguished talent. The only doubt, therefore, which we have felt ourselves interested in solving, is, whether this tide of success has appeared to produce a beneficial or mischievous effect on the mind of the favoured poet; whether it has seduced him into negligence, or excited him to greater exertion; whether it has confirmed him in a love of paradox and disdain of received opinions, or conciliated in him a more charitable and tolerant spirit. It was with a view to this question that we included his two poems in this article, the reader being thus enabled to follow us more conveniently, in our examination of their respective merits. This examination may be completed in few words, because the poems to be compared are merely varieties of a single species, being both tragical love-tales, of which Leila and Zuleika, the Giaour and Selim, are the parallel characters. Of Leila we know nothing but that she was a beautiful Circassian slave, highly seducing, and, like most slaves, easily seduced; sufficiently adroit in devising means to meet the wishes of her lover, but finally detected in her attempt to escape with him, and drowned, in conformity to Turkish custom, by her master. Whatever interest she inspires arises, partly from the atrocious cruelty of which she is the victim, and partly from the strange effect produced by her death on the mind of the Giaour. These effects, however, as her lover himself informs us, were the result, not of her merits, but of his own peculiar temperament. He observes that the cold in clime are cold in blood,' but that his passions resembled the lava-flood that boils in Etna's breast of flame.' Thus reduced to the alternative of satisfying all his desires, or of being consumed by them, he naturally chuses the former; and because every religion, and code of laws, and system of morality, is, more or less, hostile to the unlimited enjoyment of sensuality and revenge, he rejects them all, and adopts a scheme of ethics more congenial to his constitution. Had Leila proved refractory, it follows, from his antipathy to ceremonious love, that he must have obtained her favours by force. Had she been subse-, quently faithless to him, he tells us that he must have murdered Z 3 her; her; but, being deprived of her whilst their attachment was mutual and unabated, he pines and dies under this disappointment. In the agony of remorse he sometimes wishes that she had not returned his love; but the reflection which sooths him on his death-bed, and to which he recurs with exultation, is, that he had been happythat he had possessed her. The heroine of the other poem, the blooming Zuleika, is all purity and loveliness. Never, we think, was a faultless character more delicately or more justly delineated. Her piety, her intelligence, her strict sense of duty, and her undeviating love of truth, appear to have been originally blended in her mind rather than inculcated by education. She is always natural, always attractive, always affectionate; and it must be admitted that her affections are not unworthily bestowed. Selim, when an orphan and dependant, is never degraded by calamity; when better hopes are presented to him his buoyant spirit rises with his expectations; he is enterprising with no more rashness than becomes his youth; and when disappointed in the success of a well concerted project, he meets, with intrepidity, the fate to which he is exposed through his own generous forbearance. Now we presume that Lord Byron, who had the option of giving the priority of publication to either of these poems, must have preferred the Giaour, from an impression that what is strange and terrific and anomalous is best suited to the higher class of poetry. But although the rapid demand for many successive editions of the work was well calculated to strengthen this impression, the author has embraced every opportunity of introducing new interpolations for the purpose of softening what was too coarse in the first sketch, or of supplying what was defective, or of explaining what was obscure. We need not inquire whether these additions were dictated by his own maturer taste, or by his deference to the sentiments of others, because the two suppositions are equally creditable to the candour of the author. The second poem affords still more conclusive evidence in his favour, since it does not contain a single offensive passage. To us, indeed, the Bride of Abydos appears to be in every respect superior to the Giaour, though, in point of diction, it has been, perhaps, less warmly admired. We will not stop to argue this point, but will simply observe, that what is read with ease is generally read with rapidity, and that many beauties of style which escape observation in a simple and connected narrative, would be forced on the reader's attention by abrupt and perplexing transitions. It is only when a traveller is obliged to stop on his journey that he is disposed to examine and admire the prospect. ART. ART. IV.-De l'Allemagne. Par Madame La Baronne De Staël Holstein. Seconde Edition. 3 tom. 8vo. 1813. FEW pieces of literary history are more curious than those con nected with the present volumes. In themselves, whether we consider them as a review by a native of France of the vast circle of German authorship, or as the work of a woman' de omni scibili,' (for, in truth, it is not easy to name that branch of human inquiry which does not find its place in some part or other of the following pages,)—their appearance is a phenomenon that fully justifies the interest which they have excited. Nor was it possible that this interest should not be much augmented by those singular acts of jealous power which sought to strangle in its swaddling clothes this formidable assertor of German eminence. The regular censors of the press in France (as Madame de Staël informs us, in an indignant and, to Englishmen, a sufficiently gratifying preface) were contented, indeed, to authorize its appearance with the exception of some few passages, which in the present edition are marked with inverted commas. This permission was in fact equivalent to an unqualified approbation of the whole; since the passages thus singled out are, in general, so little obnoxious either to praise or blame, so little distinguished from the rest of the work, and so easily spared from it, that the erasures may seem to have been made more from the desire of doing something than the impression that any thing was necessary to be done. Such harmless critics, whether before or after publication, are little qualified to disturb an author's tranquillity. But there exists in modern France another and a very different judge of literary questions, by whom the daughter of Necker was regarded with no kindly nor impartial eye, Πικρός λυτήρ νεικέων Ξεινος εκ πυρος συθείς σίδαρος. The will of this patron of literature was soon made manifest, in an order from the Lieutenant of Police to destroy the whole impression which the censors had sanctioned, and on which, thus authorized, the publisher had risked his property. This was followed by a polite message to Madame de Staël herself, requiring her to surrender the original copy of her work, (a demand which how she evaded we are not told,) permitting her, at the same time, to visit foreign countries, and allowing her, at first, twenty-four hours, afterwards, in excess of kindness, seven or eight days, for the arrangement of her affairs, and to bid adieu for ever to her paternal home and her native soil. This rigorous sentence was imposed, General Savary assured her, not as a punishment for having omitted the Emperor's praises in her last work, but because the air of Z 4 France France did not, in the General's opinion, agree with her, and because the French people were not as yet reduced to seek for models among the nations whom Madame de Staël admired. To these circumstances we owe the present residence of this lady in England, and the publication of her persecuted work by a London bookseller. In all this there is nothing which, under a government like that of France, could reasonably excite surprise, except the tone and character of the publication, on account of which a woman of elevated rank, and still more elevated literary character, has incurred a treatment so severe. For, though General Savary affects in his letter to attribute her exile to her general conduct, and though 'post hoc, ergo propter hoc,' is not in logic a legitimate inference; still it is plain, from the expressions of Savary himself, that her work on Germany was the immediate cause which drew down on her head those thunder-clouds which only lowered before, and which had seemed to respect the ancient privilege of her laurel chaplet. Yet, of all publications, the present work might seem least likely to have attracted the storm, did we not recollect that eminence of every kind is hateful to despotic power. It is strictly and truly what it professes to be, a critical and philosophical treatise. On every subject which could inflame the public mind in France, or give a moment's well-grounded offence to any form of government, a guarded silence is observed; and, as we have General Savary's assurance that it is not absolutely expected by the police that every work published in Paris should contain the author's confession of his faith in the Emperor, we can only suppose what will excite, perhaps, the surprise of future generations, that it was in the nineteenth century regarded as treasonable in France to bestow any praises on, not the government but, the literary and moral character of the English and Germans. To imitate or to extol Europeans is in China, we believe, illegal; but in Europe it would be difficult to find another instance where an author was, under pain of banishment, forbidden to criticise with fairness or favour the writings and morals of foreigners; of foreigners, above all, whose nations, in every instance but one, were at that moment the allies of her own. Yet, in truth, the policy of such prohibition is altogether consistent with the interests and hazards of an empire built mainly on opinion, and whose ascendancy relies, as that of France so lately did, on a supposed superiority over all the earth in literature no less than in arms. Let France, it might be said by the sages of the Thuilleries, let France be brought to perceive that other nations have any thing either great or wise or illustrious which they have not borrowed from herself, and half her confidence is gone. Let the rest of Europe |