versation pleasing to ladies when he chose to please; but, to the young dandies of fashion, noble and ignoble, he must have been very repulsive: as long as he continued to be the ton,-the lion,

better; he might have made himself subservient to government, and wormed himself into some lacrative place; or he might have lived meanly, conformed himself stupidly or cringingly to all humours, and been borne onward on the wings-they may have endured him without opening

of society with little personal expense.

their mouths, because he had a frown and a lash 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, 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;

With this temper, these feelings, this genius, exposed to a combination of such untoward and trying circumstances, it would indeed have been inimitably praiseworthy if Lord Byron could-sly hints, curve of the lip, side looks, treache 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.

rous 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 son 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

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 unat-freedom, the land where his head had been tended 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.

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 con

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 : —

« 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, to

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 educa-
tion, or from the charge of supporting them; by
what right does it censure him for ceasing to
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 com-
pel individuals who dislike each other to con-
tinue 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
1
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 ap- |
probation 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 de-
fiance, 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.

"

I

It was an

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.
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 concerning 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. »

In the spring of 1816, Lord Byron quitted England, to return to it no more. He crossed over to France, through which he passed rapidly 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 lake of Geneva. With what enthusiasm he enjoyed its scenery, his own poetry soon exhibited to the world. The third canto of Childe Harold, Manfred, and the Prisoner of Chillon were composed at the Campagno Diodati, at Coligny, a mile from Geneva.

The anecdotes that follow are given as his lordship related them to Captain Medwin:

« 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 What do they say of my family affairs in wretched state of health, and worse spirits, when England, Parry? My story, I suppose, like other I was at Geneva; but quiet and the lake, physiminor events, interested the people for a day, cians better than Polidori, soon set me up. I and was then forgotten?» I replied, no; never led so moral a life as during my residence thought, owing to the very great interest the pub-in that country; but I gained no credit by it. lic took in him, it was still remembered and Where there is a mortification, there ought to be talked about. I mentioned that it was generally reward. On the contrary, there is no story so supposed a difference of religious sentiments be- absurd that they did not invent at my cost. I tween him and Lady Byron had caused the pub- was watched by glasses on the opposite side of lic breach. No, Parry, was the reply; « Lady the lake, and by glasses too that must have had Byron has a liberal mind, particularly as to very distorted optics. I was waylaid in my evenreligious opinions; and I wish, when I married ing drives-1 was accused of corrupting all the her, that I had possessed the same command over grisettes in the rue Basse. I believe that they myself that I now do. Had I possessed a little more looked upon me as a man-monster worse than the wisdom, and more forbearance, we might have piqueur.» 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 artificial regulations: my conduct has always been

«I 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 old 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 ac- Manfred was the first of Lord Byron's dramatic quaintances; Shelley, Monk Lewis, and Hob- poems, and, is perhaps the finest. The melanhouse were almost the only English people I saw. choly is more heartfelt, and the stern haughtiness No wonder ; I showed a distaste for society at that of the principal character is altogether of an intime, and went little among the Genevese; be- tellectual cast: the conception of this character is sides, I could not speak French. What is become Miltonic. The poet has made him worthy to of my boatman and boat? I suppose she is rot- abide amongst those palaces of nature, those ten; she was never worth much. When I went icy halls, where forms and falls the avathe tour of the lake in her with Shelley and Hob-lanche.» Manfred stands up against the stupenhouse, she was nearly wrecked near the very dous scenery of the poem, and is as lofty, towerspot where Saint-Preux and Julia were in dangering, and grand as the mountains: when we picture of being drowned. It would have been classical to have been lost there, but not so agreeable. Shelley was on the lake much oftener than 1, at all 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..

like a frozen hurricane-starlight beautiful-the I do not recollect to have exchanged a word with whole of the day was fine, and, in point of wea- another Englishman since I left their country, ther, as the day in which Paradise was made. and almost all these I had known before. The Passed whole woods of withered pines-all wi- | others, and God knows there were some hundreds, thered-trunks stripped and lifeless-done by a who bored me with letters or visits, I refused to single winter.» have any communication with; and shall be proud and happy when that wish becomes mutual. »

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: the noble author shows an absolute control over his means, and at every cadence, rhyme, or construction, however whimsical, delights us with novel and magical associations. We heartily wish, that the fine poetry so richly scattered through the sixteen cantos of this most original and astonishing production, had not been mixed up with much that is equally frivolous 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.

Of lord Byron's tragedies we shall merely remark, with reference to the particular nature of After a residence of three years at Venice, their tragic character, that their effect is rather Lord Byron removed to Ravenna, towards the grand, terrible, and terrific, than mollifying, sub- | close of the year 1819. Here he wrote the Produing, or pathetic. As dramatic poems they phecy of Dante, which exhibited a new specimen possess much beauty and originality. 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 author to the severest denunciations, on account of the crime of impiety alleged against it; as it seems to have a tendency to call in question the benevolence of Providence. In answer to the loud and general outery which this production occasioned, Lord Byron observed, in a letter to his publisher, «If Cain' Le blasphemous, 'PaWhilst at Venice, Byron displayed a noble in-radise Lost' is blasphemous, and the words of stance of generosity. The house of a shoemaker, the Oxford gentleman, Evil, be thou my good,' near his lordship's residence in St Samuel, was are from that very poem from the mouth of burnt to the ground, with every article it con- Satan; and is there any thing more in that of tained, and the proprietor reduced with a large Lucifer in the mystery? Cain' is nothing more family to the greatest indigence. When his lord- than a drama, not a piece of argument : if Luship ascertained the afflicting circumstances of cifer and Cain speak as the first rebel and first that calamity, he not only ordered a new and murderer may be supposed to speak, nearly all superior habitation to be immediately built for the rest of the personages talk also according to the sufferer, the whole expense of which was borne their characters; and the stronger passions have by him, but also presented the unfortunate trades-ever been permitted to the drama. I have man with a sum equal in value to the whole of avoided introducing the Deity as in scripture, his lost stock in trade and furniture. though Milton does, and not very wisely either : but have adopted his angel as sent to Cain instead, on purpose to avoid shocking any feelings on the subject, by falling short of what all un

|

Lord Byron avoided as much as possible any intercourse with his countrymen at Venice; and this seems to have been in a great measure necessary in order to prevent the intrusion of imperti-inspired men must fall short in, viz. giving an nent curiosity. In the appendix to one of his adequate notion of the effect of the presence of poems, written with reference to a book of travels, Jehovah. The old mysteries introduced him libethe author of which disclaimed any wish to be rally enough, and all this Lavoided in the new one. » introduced to the noble lord, he loftily and sar- An event occurred at Ravenna during his castically chastises the incivility of such a gra- lordship's stay there, which made a deep imprestuitous declaration, expresses his « utter abhor-sion on him, and to which he alludes in the fifth rence of any contact with the travelling English ;» | canto of Don Juan. The military commandant and thus concludes: Except Lords Lansdowne, of the place, suspected of being secretly a CarboJersey, and Lauderdale, Messrs. Scott, Hammond, Sir Humphrey Davy, the late Mr Lewis, W. Bankes, M. Hoppner, Thomas Moore, Lord Kinnaird, his brother, Mr Joy, and Mr Hobhouse,

naro, but too powerful a man to be arrested, was assassinated opposite Lord Byroa's palace. His lordship had his foot in the stirrup at the usual hour of exercise, when his horse started at the

yet his wavering never amounted to a disbelief of the count of that name, which connexion, with in the divine Founder of christianity.

Calling on him one day, continues the Captain, we found him, as was sometimes the case, | silent, dull, and sombre. At length he said : 'Here is a little book somebody has sent me about christianity, that has made me very un