tained. None of his subsequent writings evince greater power either of thought, imagination, or style. Some are of equal merit in all these respects; but in no other work has he sustained himself for an equal length of time, at the greatest elevation to which his genius was capable of raising him. His English Bards had already attracted the public attention, and prepared the readers of poetry to look for something as good or better from the same quarter; but they had not anticipated anything like this grand and beautiful display. This time there was no difference of opinion or feeling. It was one general burst of delight and admiration from all classes of readers. Lord Byron's literary friends, whom he consulted about the expediency of publishing the work, had told him that it had inerit, but that it would not be relished by the mass; and had advised him not to print. A similar judgment was passed, under the same circumstances, upon Paul and Virginia, the most popular book that ever was written. Such is the value of closet criticism, compared with that which is enlightened, directed, and controlled by public opinion; and such, we may add, are the partial judgments of literary friends. But these lukewarm advisers, when they saw the success of the work, screwed up their taste in a moment to the sticking place of the general admiration; the author's enemies, the reviewers, were upon their knees; and Lord Byron, from being a discontented misanthrope, the butt of critics and the scorn of booksellers, became the idol of his nation; from an associate, as the story ran, of wolves and bears, he started into view as the reigning lion of the day. In his former publication he had treated with culpable levity some of his nearest connexions, and especially his guardian the Earl of Carlisle, well known in this country as one of the members of a commission sent out to treat with Congress during the revolutionary war, of which Lord Howe was the head, and the celebrated Ferguson, secretary,-a nobleman of the highest character, and whose only fault was, that he had written some indifferent tragedies. This levity, and other indiscretions of a similar kind, had produced a coldness towards him on the part of his family. All was now forgotten. Without being very attractive or agreeable in his social habits, he became, in consequence of his high poetical reputation, graced and

set off by his noble birth and splendid fortune, an object of universal interest and curiosity. Nothing seemed to be wanting to complete his happiness but a good wife; and as the ladies were all in love with him, it was not difficult to supply this deficiency. He soon married an accomplished and beautiful woman, established himself in a splendid mansion on Piccadilly Terrace, and began to write more poetry. Sir Walter Scott had brought into vogue by his Lay of the Last Minstrel, and his Marmion, the fashion of long ballads in six cantos, written in a short octosyllabic measure; and Lord Byron, with a view probably of surpassing this great and only competitor upon his own ground, produced in rapid succession the Giaour and the Bride of Abydos; and afterwards, to prove the facility with which he could manage all measures, the Corsair and Lara in the common heroic couplet. None of these poems were to be compared with Childe Harold; nor would they perhaps of themselves have given a sudden reputation to a new pretender; but under favor of the vogue that had now attached itself to the author's name, they all passed for prodigies. Besides these greater pieces, he threw off with careless prodigality, on every occasion that presented itself, a variety of shorter ones mostly of the lyric class, some of which, and more especially the best of the Hebrew Melodies, are among the sweetest and sublimest strains to be found in the English, or any other language, and are far superior to the longer works of the same period.

Such was the position of Lord Byron at this second period of his life. He certainly appeared to the world, as one of the most favored and enviable beings in creation. Placed at the summit of fame and fortune, in the pride of health, and with the consciousness of genius, he had seemingly nothing to do but to go on triumphantly through life, conquering and to conquer, revising his old poems and writing new ones. A few months elapsed, and we saw him breaking away suddenly in disgust from his wife and child, his family, his friends, and his country, and wandering about the world, a wretched and solitary outcast; detesting the very name of an Englishman, and regarded in turn by all that bore it with a feeling of aversion, which could hardly be repressed by a just admiration of his genius. After wasting his best years in this intolerable exile, we have seen him finally dying of fatigue and fever in the marshes of Missolonghi.

tune.

It does not suit our present purpose to examine in detail the circumstances, that led to this strange reverse of forSome of them were of a delicate nature, and but ill adapted to sustain a public scrutiny. We may remark, however, in general, that the origin of his errors, and of the misery which they brought upon him, seems to have been a sort of intellectual intoxication, produced by his extraordinary success, operating upon a naturally eccentric and extravagant disposition. While he resided on the continent he was probably very unhappy. He led a lonely and isolated life. The few persons, with whom he was known to associate, were such as he could not possibly either respect or love; and he can only have admitted them into his society for the purpose of escaping from total solitude. He was always burning with a feverish thirst for applause and flattery; and he felt that he was now the scorn and pity, though still the admiration of the wise and good. It is easy to discover through the mask of affected contempt for public opinion, which he often puts on in his later writings, the real agony of disappointed ambition. He was seen at this period of his life to roam about from place to place, like a perturbed spirit; he was now near Genoa living alone in the country with Leigh Hunt the Cockney, and then again at Venice, tempting the ocean with Shelley the atheist. What companions, occupations, and amusements for a man that might have been leading the march of mind upon any of its proudest fields, that might have been reigning in the literary circles of London or Paris! No doubt the persevering industry, with which he pursued his poetical labors, relieved in some degree the tedium of this wretched existence. But even this resource must have been productive of some bitter feelings. When he found that his writings no longer satisfied the public, he could not of course be so well satisfied with them himself, as he formerly was. To write inmorally and negligently, for the purpose of expressing contempt and defiance of the world, is not quite so pleasing as to write well and be praised for it. Such a life might be endured for a time, but not forever. After a few years it probably became intolerable to Lord Byron; but he seems, from what we heard of him in various ways, to have been a little doubtful what course he should take. Sometimes he talked of coming to the United States, and regularly stated to the Ameri

cans who visited him that such was his intention. At other times he appears to have meditated a return to England. But the progress of the Greek Revolution finally gave a different direction to his projects.

To engage personally in this struggle between two semibarbarous nations, was a piece of reckless extravagance, entirely consistent with Lord Byron's character. The recollection of what the Greeks were formerly, and the anticipation of what they probably would be again under favorable circumstances, must induce every generous mind to wish them success. In their present state, they are what two thousand years of oppression have made them; and their own poet tells us, that a day of slavery—Sovov quae—robs a man of half his virtue. They are now no fit comrades for the disciplined and humane European officer, still less for the super-sensitive, poetical enthusiast. The highly cultivated mind shrinks intuitively from a contact with the coarser spirits that crowd the walks of busy life, retreats from the exchange, turns with disgust from the strife of contending factions, and retires within itself for happiness and peace. What then could such a man as Lord Byron do at the head of a regiment of Suliotes, leading on the tumultuous array of an oriental army? Any captain of banditti from the Italian

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mountains would have served the cause much better. was truly a case when we might have borrowed the plaintive language of the sweet poet of Mantua, and have cursed the frantic love of war, that had hurried away the finest genius of the age from his favorite studies; when we might have prayed that the plague and the fever would be kind to him; that the Turkish scymitars, which he had celebrated so often, would shew their gratitude by sparing so precious a life; that his quality of poet might protect him from the rage of the savages into whose quarrel he was plunging, as Horace pretends that his put to flight an enormous wolf in the Sabine wood. But it was not so much the mere love of war, that carried him away, as the tedium of his previous existence, and the glorious visionary shapes in which his fancy had probably clothed the persons and things with which he was about to connect himself. It is said that he ordered just before his departure from Italy, and took with him to Greece, three large

helmets upon which his family arms were gorgeously emblazoned. He thought, perhaps, that he was to make one in a new brotherhood of chivalry, to be the Achilles of a second Iliad, or the Arthur of another Round Table; that he should turn the tide of battle by the mere exhibition of his person, wherever he made his appearance; sweep away with the breath of his nostrils the miscreant enemy, Turks, Albanians, Tartars, Pachas, and all; rush on with a few faithful followers to Constantinople, and plant the standard of the cross upon the dome of St Sophia at the close of the first campaign. If his good genius, or rather if the sober divinity of plain common sense, could have gained possession for a day or two, nay for a few hours only, of this grand and generous but bewildered intellect, could have pointed out the vanity of all these idle fancies, and shewn the bard how utterly unfit he was to engage in this wild and savage warfare, he might at this moment have been writing more poetry at Pisa, or wherever else he was last residing. And oh! if the same power could have freed his noble heart for a moment from the gross enchantments of low sensual pleasure, that had got possession of it; could have conquered the stern spirit of ferocious pride, that ruled within him, and infused into his angry bosom the sweet balm of benevolence and charity; could have cleared his intellectual eye from the clouds that covered it, and raised up before him the charming forms of truth, and virtue, and religion, in all their celestial purity and beauty;-how quickly he would have quitted the fatal cause in which he had engaged himself; with what disgust he would have turned from his vicious associates, and his corrupt Italian haunts, and have hurried back to his natural friends, and his own happy country; with what new ardor and patience he would have devoted himself to his favorite art; and with how much better taste, and doubtless higher and more brilliant success, he would have labored in it, when like Hercules of old he had given to virtue all his mighty mind. But no, he must go to Greece; and to die as he did, when he got there, was almost the necessary consequence of going. What could his ethereal spirit, nursed in the lap of luxury, and fed forever on the luscious diet of poetry and romance, find to do in the fens and forests of Etolia? It was natural, it was