5

10

in force of diction, and inextinguishable energy of sentiment, he clearly surpasses them all. "Words that breathe, and thoughts that burn,'' are not merely the ornaments, but the common staple of his poetry; and he is not inspired or impressive only in some happy passages, but through the whole body and tissue of his composition. It was an unavoidable condition, perhaps, of this higher excellence, that his scene should be narrow, and his persons few. To compass such ends as he had in view, it was necessary to reject all ordinary agents, and all trivial combinations. could not possibly be amusing, or ingenious 15 or playful; or hope to maintain the requisite pitch of interest by the recitation of sprightly adventures, or the opposition of common characters. To produce great effects, in short, he felt that it was necessary to deal only with the greater passions-with the exaltations of a daring faney, and the errors of a lofty intellect-with the pride, the terrors, and the agonies of strong emotion-the fire and air alone of our human elements.2

He

In this respect, and in his general notion of the end and means of poetry, we have sometimes thought that his views fell more in with those of the Lake poets,3 than of any other existing party in the poetical commonwealth; and, in some of his later productions especially, it is impossible not to be struck with his occasional approaches to the style and manner of this class of writers. Lord Byron, however, it should be observed, like all other persons of a quick sense of beauty, and sure enough of their own originality to be in no fear of paltry imputations, is a great mimic of styles and manners, and a great borrower of external character. He and Scott, accordingly, are full of imitations of all the writers from whom they have ever derived gratification; and the two most original writers of the age might appear, to superficial observers, to be the most deeply indebted to their predecessors. In this particular instance, we have no fault to find with Lord Byron. For undoubtedly the finer passages of Wordsworth and Southey have in them wherewithal to lend an impulse to the utmost ambition of rival genius; and their diction

1 Gray, The Progress of Poesy, 110 (p. 63). Words and thoughts are here transposed.

2 A reference to the ancient belief that all forms of physical existence were composed of earth, air, fire, and water.

Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey, so called because they lived in the lake district of England.

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

55

and manner of writing is frequently both striking and original. But we must say that it would afford us still greater pleasure to find these tuneful gentlemen returning the compliment which Lord Byron has here paid to their talents, and forming themselves on the model rather of his imitations, than of their own originals. In those imitations they will find that, though he is sometimes abundantly mystical, he never, or at least very rarely, indulges in absolute nonsense, never takes his lofty flights upon mean or ridiculous occasions, and, above all, never dilutes his strong conceptions, and magnificent imaginations, with a flood of oppressive verbosity. On the contrary, he is, of all living writers, the most concise and condensed; and, we would fain hope, may go far, by his example, to redeem the great reproach of our modern literature-its intolerable prolixity and redundance. In his nervous and manly lines, we find no elaborate amplification of common sentiments, no ostentatious polishing of pretty expressions; and we really think that the brilliant success which has rewarded his disdain of those paltry artifices, should put to shame forever that puling and self-admiring race, who can live through half a volume on the stock of a single thought, and expatiate over divers fair quarto pages with the details of one tedious description. In Lord Byron, on the contrary, we have a perpetual stream of thick-coming fancies,' an eternal spring of fresh-blown images, which seem called into existence by the sudden flash of those glowing thoughts and overwhelming emotions that struggle for expression through the whole flow of his poetry, and impart to a diction that is often abrupt and irregular a force and a charm which frequently realize all that is said of inspiration.

With all these undoubted claims to our admiration, however, it is impossible to deny that the noble author before us has still something to learn, and a good deal to correct. He is frequently abrupt and careless, and sometimes obscure. There are marks, occasionally, of effort and straining after an emphasis which is generally spontaneous; and above all, there is far too great a monotony in the moral coloring of his pictures, and too much repetition of the same sentiments and maxims. He delights too exclusively in the delineation of a certain morbid exaltation of character and feeling, a sort of demoniacal sublimity, not without some traits of the ruined Arch1 See Macbeth, V, 3, 38.

angel. He is haunted almost perpetually with the image of a being feeding and fed upon by violent passions, and the recollections of the catastrophes they have occasioned; and, though worn out by their past indulgence, unable to sustain the burden of an existence which they do not continue to animate-full of pride, and revenge, and obduracy-disdaining life and death, and mankind and himself-and trampling, in his scorn, not only upon the falsehood and formality of polished life, but upon its tame virtues and slavish devotion; yet envying, by fits, the very beings he despises, and melting into mere softness and compassion, when the helplessness of childhood or the frailty of woman make an appeal to his generosity. Such is the person with whom we are called upon almost exclusively to sympathize in all the greater productions of this distinguished writer,-in Childe Harold-in The Corsair-in Lara-in The Siege of Corinth-in Parisina, and in most of the smaller pieces.

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

It is impossible to represent such a character better than Lord Byron has done in all these productions; or indeed to represent anything more terrible in its anger, or more attractive in its relenting. In point of effect, we readily admit that no one character can be more poetical or impressive, but it is really too much to find the scene perpetually filled by one character, not only in all the acts of each several drama, but in all the different dramas of the series; and, grand and impressive as it is, we feel at last that these very qualities make some relief more indispensable, and oppress the spirits of ordinary mortals with too deep an impression of awe and repulsion. There 40 is too much guilt in short, and too much gloom, in the leading character; and though it be a fine thing to gaze, now and then, on stormy seas, and thunder-shaken mountains, we should prefer passing our days in sheltered valleys, and by the murmur of calmer waters.1

We are aware that these metaphors may be turned against us, and that, without metaphor, it may be said that men do not pass their days in reading poetry, and that, as they may look into Lord Byron only about as often as they look abroad upon tempests, they have no more reason to complain of him for being grand and gloomy, than to complain of the same qualities in the glaciers and volcanoes which they go so far to visit. Painters, too, it may be said, 1 See Psalms, 23:2.

45

50

55

have often gained great reputation by their representations of tigers and other ferocious animals, or of caverns and banditti; and poets should be allowed, without reproach, to indulge in analogous exercises. We are far from thinking that there is no weight in these considerations; and feel how plausibly it may be said that we have no better reason for a great part of our complaint than that an author, to whom we are already very greatly indebted, has chosen rather to please himself than us, in the use he makes of his talents.

This, no doubt, seems both unreasonable and ungrateful. But it is nevertheless true that a public benefactor becomes a debtor to the public, and is, in some degree, responsible for the employment of those gifts which seem to be conferred upon him, not merely for his own delight, but for the delight and improvement of his fellows through all generations. Independent of this, however, we think there is a reply to the analogy. A great living poet is not like a distant volcano, or an occasional tempest. He is a volcano in the heart of our land, and a cloud that hangs over our dwellings; and we have some reason to complain, if, instead of genial warmth and grateful shade, he voluntarily darkens and inflames our atmosphere with perpetual fiery explosions and pitchy vapors. Lord Byron's poetry, in short, is too attractive and too famous to lie dormant or inoperative; and, therefore, if it produce any painful or pernicious effects, there will be murmurs, and ought to be suggestions of alteration. Now, though an artist may draw fighting tigers and hungry lions in as lively or natural a way as he can, without giving any encouragement to human ferocity, or even much alarm to human fear, the case is somewhat different when a poet represents men with tiger-like dispositions; and yet more so when he exhausts the resources of his genius to make this terrible being interesting and attractive, and to represent all the lofty virtues as the natural allies of his ferocity. It is still worse when he proceeds to show that all these precious gifts of dauntless courage, strong affection, and high imagination, are not only akin to guilt, but the parents of misery; and that those only have any chance of tranquillity or happiness in this world whom it is the object of his poetry to make us shun and despise.

These, it appears to us, are not merely errors in taste, but perversions of morality; and, as a great poet is necessarily a moral

teacher, and gives forth his ethical lessons, in general with far more effect and authority than any of his graver brethren, he is peculiarly liable to the censures reserved for those who turn the means of improvement to purposes of corruption.

15

20

25

30

It may no doubt be said that poetry in general tends less to the useful than the splendid qualities of our nature, that a character poetically good has long been dis- 10 tinguished from one that is morally so, and that, ever since the time of Achilles, our sympathies, on such occasions, have been chiefly engrossed by persons whose deportment is by no means exemplary, and who, in many points, approach to the temperament of Lord Byron's ideal hero. There is some truth in this suggestion also. But other poets, in the first place, do not allow their favorites so outrageous a monopoly of the glory and interest of the piece, and sin less, therefore, against the laws either of poetical or distributive justice. In the second place, their heroes are not, generally, either so bad or so good as Lord Byron's, and do not indeed very much exceed the standard of truth and nature, in either of the extremes. His, however, are as monstrous and unnatural as centaurs1 and hippogriffs,2 and must ever figure in the eye of sober reason as so many bright and hateful impossibilities. But the most important distinction is, that the other poets who deal in peccant heroes, neither feel nor express that ardent affection for them which is visible in the whole of this author's delineations, but merely make use of them as necessary agents in the extraordinary adventures they have to detail, and persons whose mingled vices and virtues are requisite to bring about the catastrophe of their story. In Lord Byron, however, the interest of the story, where there happens to be one, which is not always the case, is uniformly postponed to that of the character itself, into 45 which he enters so deeply, and with so extraordinary a fondness, that he generally continues to speak in its language, after it has, been dismissed from the stage, and to inculcate, on his own authority, the same sentiments which had been previously recommended by its example. We do not consider it as unfair, therefore, to say that Lord Byron appears to us to be the zealous apostle of a certain fierce and magnificent misanthropy, which has already saddened

1 Fabulous monsters, half man and half horse.
2 Fabulous winged monsters, part man, part lion,
and part eagle.

35

40

50

55

his poetry with too deep a shade, and not only led to a great misapplication of great talents, but contributed to render popular some very false estimates of the constituents of human happiness and merit. It is irksome, however, to dwell upon observations so general, and we shall probably have better means of illustrating these remarks, if they are really well founded, when we come to speak of the particular publications by which they have now been suggested.

We had the good fortune, we believe, to be among the first who proclaimed the rising of a new luminary, on the appearance of Childe Harold on the poetical horizon, and we pursued his course with due attention through several of the constellations. If we have lately omitted to record his progress with the same accuracy, it is by no means because we have regarded it with more indifference, or supposed that it would be less interesting to the public, but because it was so extremely conspicuous as no longer to require the notices of an official observer. In general, we do not think it necessary, nor indeed quite fair, to oppress our readers with an account of works which are as well known to them as to ourselves, or with a repetition of sentiments in which all the world is agreed. Wherever a work, therefore, is very popular, and where the general opinion of its merits appears to be substantially right, we think ourselves at liberty to leave it out of our chronicle, without incurring the censure of neglect or inattention. A very rigorous application of this maxim might have saved our readers the trouble of reading what we now write-and, to confess the truth, we write it rather to gratify ourselves, than with the hope of giving them much information. At the same time, some short notice of the progress of such a writer ought, perhaps, to appear in his contemporary journals, as a tribute due to his eminence; and a zealous critic can scarcely set about examining the merits of any work, or the nature of its reception by the public, without speedily discovering very urgent cause for his admonitions, both to the author and his admirers.

The most considerable of [the author's recent publications] is the Third Canto of Childe Harold, a work which has the disadvantage of all continuations, in admitting of little absolute novelty in the plan of the work or the cast of its character, and must, besides, remind all Lord Byron's readers

In

of the extraordinary effect produced by the sudden blazing forth of his genius, upon their first introduction to that title. spite of all this, however, we are persuaded that this Third Part of the poem will not be pronounced inferior to either of the former; and, we think, will probably be ranked above them by those who have been most delighted with the whole. The great success of this singular production, indeed, has always appeared to us an extraordinary proof of its merits; for, with all its genius, it does not belong to a sort of poetry that rises easily to popularity. It has no story or action, very little variety of character, and a great deal of reasoning and reflection of no very attractive tenor. It is substantially a contemplative and ethical work, diversified with fine description, and adorned or overshadowed by the perpetual presence of one emphatic person, who is sometimes the author, and sometimes the object, of the reflections on which the interest is chiefly rested. It required, no doubt, great force of writing, and a decided tone of originality to recommend a performance of this sort so powerfully as this has been recommended to public notice and admiration; and those high characteristics belong perhaps still more eminently to the part that is now before us, than to any of the former. There is the same stern and lofty disdain of mankind, and their ordinary pursuits and enjoyments, with the same bright gaze on nature, and the same magic power of giving interest and effect to her delineations-but mixed up, we think, with deeper and more matured reflections, and a more intense sensibility to all that is grand or lovely in the external world. Harold, in short, is somewhat older since he last appeared upon the scene; and while the vigor of his intellect has been confirmed, and his confidence in his own opinions increased, his mind has also become more sensitive; and his misanthropy, thus softened over by habits of calmer contemplation, appears less active and impatient, even although more deeply rooted than before. Undoubtedly the finest parts of the poem before us are those which thus embody the weight of his moral sentiments; or disclose the lofty sympathy which binds the despiser of Man to the glorious aspects of Nature. It is in these, we think, that the great attractions of the work consist, and the strength of the author's genius is seen. The narrative and mere description are of 1 The first and second cantos had appeared in 1812.

far inferior interest. With reference to the sentiments and opinions, however, which thus give its distinguishing character to the piece, we must say, that it seems no longer possible to ascribe them to the ideal person whose name it bears, or to any other than the author himself. Lord Byron, we think, has formerly complained of those who identified him with his hero, or supposed that Harold was but the expositor of his own feelings and opinions; and in noticing the former portions of the work, we thought it unbecoming to give any countenance to such a supposition. In this last part, however, it is really impracticable to distinguish them. Not only do the author and his hero travel and reflect together, but, in truth, we scarcely ever have any distinct intimation to which of them the sentiments so energetically expressed are to be ascribed; and in those which are unequivocally given as those of the noble author himself, there is the very same tone of misanthropy, sadness, and scorn, which we were formerly willing to regard as a part of the assumed costume of the Childe. We are far from supposing, indeed, that Lord Byron would disavow any of these sentiments; and though there are some which we must ever think it most unfortunate to entertain, and others which it appears improper to have published, the greater part are admirable, and cannot be perused without emotion, even by those to whom they may appear erroneous.

The poem opens with a burst of grand poetry and lofty and impetuous feeling, in which the author speaks undisguisedly in his own person.

[2]

Once more upon the waters! Yet once more! And the waves bound beneath me, as a steed That knows his rider. Welcome, to their roar! Swift be their guidance, wheresoe'er it lead! Though the strain 'd mast should quiver as a

reed,

And the rent canvas fluttering strew the gale, Still must I on; for I am as a weed,

Flung from the rock, on Ocean's foam, to sail
Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's
breath prevail.
[3]

In my youth's summer, did I sing of one,
The wand'ring outlaw of his own dark mind;
Again I seize the theme then but begun,
And bear it with me, as the rushing wind

Bears the cloud onwards. In that tale I find
The furrows of long thought, and dried-up

O'er which all heavily the journeying years Plod the last sands of life,-where not a flower appears.

[4]

Since my young days of passion-joy, or pain, Perchance my heart and harp have lost a string,

And both may jar. It may be that in vain
I would essay, as I have sung, to sing.
Yet, though a dreary strain, to this I cling;
So that it wean me from the weary dream
Of selfish grief or gladness!-so it fling
Forgetfulness around me it shall seem,
To me, though to none else, a not ungrateful
theme.

After a good deal more in the same strain, he proceeds,

[7]

Yet must I think less wildly:-I have thought
Too long and darkly; till my brain became
In its own eddy boiling and o'erwrought,
A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame:
And thus, untaught in youth my heart to tame,
My springs of life were poison'd.-
Something too much of this:-but now 'tis
past,

And the spell closes with its silent seal!
Long absent Harold reappears at last.

10

15

20

25

[18]

[19]

Fit retribution! Gaul may champ the bit
And foam in fetters;-but is earth more free?
Did nations combat to make one submit;
Or league to teach all kings true sovereignty?
What! shall reviving thraldom again be
The patch'd-up idol of enlighten'd days?
Shall we, who struck the lion down, shall we
Pay the wolf homage?—

[20]

If not, o'er one fall'n despot boast no more!

particulars are consequently clearly and commonly known: and the reason is obvious; for as it is the object of poetry to make us feel for distant or imaginary occurrences nearly as strongly as if they were present and real, it is plain that there is no scope for her enchantments where the impressive reality, with all its vast preponderance of interest, is already before us, and where the concern we take in the gazette1 far outgoes any emotion that can be conjured up in us by the help of fine descriptions. It is natural, however, for the sensitive tribe of poets to mistake the common interest which they then share with the unpoetical part of their countrymen, for a vocation to versify; and so they proceed to pour out the lukewarm distillations of their phantasies upon the unchecked effervescence of public feeling! All our bards, accordingly, great and small, and of all sexes, ages, and professions, from Scott and Southey down to hundreds without names or additions,2 have ventured upon this theme-and failed in the management of it! And while they yielded to the patriotic impulse, as if they had all caught the inspiring summons

Let those rhyme now who never rhym'd before, And those who always rhyme, rhyme now the

more 3

The result has been that scarcely a line to be remembered had been produced on a subject which probably was thought, of itself, a secure passport to immortality. It required some courage to venture on a theme beset with so many dangers, and deformed with the wrecks of so many former adventurers;-and a theme, too, which, in its general conception, appeared alien to the prevailing tone of Lord Byron's poetry. See, however, with what easy strength he enters upon it, and with how much grace 45 he gradually finds his way back to his own peculiar vein of sentiment and diction.

40