Stagyrite dwindled into a Byronomastic Mævius-hath our reproving Erasmus shrunk into a barking Menippus? 'Absolute nonsense!' Well, let that pass. He goes on-" The next stanza is a mere hubbub of words;"

"Bah! if you become a portion of that around you, you become incorporated with the high mountains-and thus incorporated with them, how can they be to you a feeling?" Verily, most sapient critic, this indeed would be pruning poetry down to matter of fact. Dost suppose-most learned Theban!-that Byron wished to become a mountain-man, or a man-mountain, according with your incorporation, or agreeable to such calibre as the author of The Isle of Palms, and City of the Plague, who himself did actually become a mountain in labour,' and bring forth nothing? Alas! -magnanimous Christopher! it is but too apparent that thou hast never been admitted into the inmost shrine of the Muses-hast never gazed upon the glowing sky with the communion of a kindred spirit-hast never owned the eager longings of the soul, on some hushed night, to soar beyond its frail tenement, and mingle with the moonless stars, that seem to wink thee to their azure palaces-hast never heard in the voice of the evening stream, the dulcet tones of quiet friendship, asking thy love-hast never feltThe sun's gorgeous comingHis setting indescribable, which fills

Our eyes with pleasant tears as we behold

Him sink, and feel our hearts float softly with him
Along the western paradise of clouds."*

Oh! couldst thou feel the loveliness of soul that must have generated the god-like inspiration of those words, thou couldst never have dreamt of lowering the proud eagle-wing of poesy to the mere level flight of the house-thrush or the ventureless sail of the much-cawing rook. Ah! no, Christie! stick to thy "noctes ambrosianæ,"—or, if thou likest best, go back to William Pitt' and politics, and be assured nobody will disturb thee; but, prythee, until thou gettest rid of thy spleen against the greatest poet since the time of Milton, stay among the mountains' and trouble us not "with what thou canst not understand from lack of feeling." We have all along conceived, that beneath this low abuse and contemptible criticism there lurked some more powerful motive than mere love of Truth or affection for Art; and here we obtain the first glimpse. After such gracious animadversions as we have mentioned above, and others of a like nature, our critic suddenly breaks into the following very apposite apostrophe. "The truthis, and we will speak it, that Byron, with all his abuse of Wordsworth, knew that he was a great poet, and felt that in all the poetry in which he speaks of nature, &c. &c. &c." And is it so?

* Cain.

most gentle Christie! Wordsworth is your friend-Lord Byron abused Wordsworth-" argal," you must abuse Byron. But Wordsworth abused Pope-Byron was Pope's friend-" argal," Byron had a right to abuse Wordsworth-Q. E. D.-especially as Pope was dead, and could scarcely defend himself, unless, from his grave, he could have prevailed upon some of his critics to read his works. But no more of that.' Return we to the lordly criticism. Let us request the reader's most particular attention to the concluding portion of our notice. Upon reading over these Christie-an strictures, we could hardly restrain our just indignation_within bounds, at the ill-timed fretfulness of its vilifications. Reader what think you of this literary Thersites endeavouring to bespatter and blacken the immortal Address to the Ocean!-You don't believe it-well, listen. "Of all poets, Byron," says Christie, has been said most aptly to have sung the sea-let us examine."

"Oh! that the desert were my dwelling-place,
With one fair spirit for my minister,
That I might all forget the human race,
And hating no one love but only her!
Ye elements !-in whose ennobling stir
I feel myself exalted—can ye not
Accord me such a being? do I err

In deeming such inhabit many a spot?
Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:

I love not man the less, but nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all, I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal."

"What connexion in thought or feeling is there between these stanzas? none,-nay, though manifestly supposed by the poet to be imbued with one and the same spirit, they cut each others' throats. In the first, he longs and prays for a friend of his soul -a female-to sip with him in the desert, the goblet of delight: in the second, he declares there is no happiness like mingling with the universe

With one fair spirit for my minister.'

yearns Yet while

"It would seem she were not human, for with her he to live that he might all forget the human race.' fancying such a one as he desires, he asks-"

Do I err

In deeming such inhabit many a spot?

Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.'

"He asks the elements if they can accord him such a being

the elements 'in whose ennobling stir he feels himself exalted'— tho' we see no exaltation in such an apostrophe-and we shall believe therefore that the one fair spirit is a child of their own.' But what is to be her ministry ?* will her own sex protect her? is he too, to be a spirit in the desert? ah! no—a man. So it is only a new version of the old story-the impassioned poet is still flesh and blood; and the child of the elements-aerial as she seems, or of illumined tears, or lambent fire, that burns not-wil be found after all, to have a taste of earth."

Was there ever so gross a misapplication of a simple meaning-so flagitious a wresting from the evident to the abstruse. With all the aspirations of a heart, loving nature for herself, the poet asks for a spirit, 'an ideal being,'-ay, Christie!-an Egeria to share his solitude-but no flesh and blood-no 'goblet of delight to sip as you would wondrously imply; and the very asking 'did he err in deeming such inhabit many a spot,' shows, plain as noon-sun, that he invoked no human nymph. Take thou heed, good Christopher, lest it was thyself that didst sip the 'goblet of delight,' something too oft, and in thy Glenlivet jocundity, didst mistake one of Tom Moore's Anacreontics for the stanzas of Lord Byron. But let us proceed, our sun is setting.

"Roll on, thou deep and dark-blue ocean roll,'

"is spirited and sonorous—and that is well-but it is nothing more, and the initial line should have been a noble burst. 'Deep and dark-blue' are epithets that can neither be much praised nor much blamed-to our mind they had been better away-for the images they suggest, if not in dissonance, are not in consonance with the thoughts that follow them, and seem not to suggest them-but to stand by themselves as idle images, or rather, forms of speech."

The profundity of observation-the novelty of intelligence-the antithetical appositeness-and the elaboration about nothing-in this paragraph, affords little or no room for remark.

"Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain.' "In vain? that is, without injuring thee? But they were not seeking to do so-nor can imagination conceive how they could-and if that be not the poet's meaning, what is? Ten thousand fleets sweeping over the deep dark-blue ocean, it may not be easy to picture to oneself; but he who can, will have a glorious conception of the sea."

"Fore me-this fellow speaks"-he says, " In vain: that is, without injuring thee?" the poet does not imply any such thing; but if he did, it must come to the same thing as what he expresses. The fleets seek not to injure the sea-because they could not-in either way establishing the omnipotence of old Ocean. We must, however, accord all just praise to the ingenuity of our Menippus, in revealing the total impossibility of ten thousand fleets

sweeping over the sea at the same time; and we beg to assure him, that in our communication with Whitehall, we have learned, that the First Lord of the Admiralty, together with several characters of calculating notoriety, all coincide with this profound insinuation. We are obliged to omit many passages we had marked out for noticing Let us come to

66 6

-Like a drop of rain

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,'

"to please you we shall say is good-tho' we hardly think so-for wrecks on wrecks are shown to our imagination, and thousands of creatures perish-'man,' he means men-if not, how unimpassioned the tale of his doom: but a drop of rain'-one single drop

was never yet seen by itself sinking into the depths of the sea* -and further be assured by us, O Neophite with Byron in thy breast, that with bubbling groan' ought not to be there, for a drop of rain melts silently in a moment, and since it is said, that 'like a drop of rain he sinks'-erase the word from thy copy, and for ryhme have reason.

'Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffined, and alone.'

"What do we find fault with that also? Yes-erase it. The poet is not singing a lament for sailors drowned at sea. He is singing the sea's wrath to man. The sea bids the ship go down, and down she goes. He wastes no thought on the crew, nor on their wives and sweethearts. What can it possibly be to him that they sink-'without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and alone.' But to cut the matter short-or to take the bull by the horns'-the line as it stands, viewing it as an expression of human sympathy and sorrow in the poet's heart forgetting the sea in the sailors, is an ambitious failure-'Tis a cold accumulation of melancholy circumstances, which are inevitable-of which the opposites were impossible-debarred by nature and fate. There is no pathos in it-'not a bit.' It is absurd-it is ludicrous -yes—it makes us laugh-though rather than laugh at misery, human or brute, we would choose to pass all our life in the cave of Trophonius."

That the line should be absurd because the circumstances are inevitable, is certainly a novelty in the ethics of poesy, and the 'impossibility of the opposites' is here an egregious errorthough we can hardly see the necessity of an opposite when facts are to be stated. A sailor dying at sea may be 'coffin'd and knell'd,' ay, and buried and not alone'-if these be not the opposites we know not what our astute critic means. But mark the intensity of what's coming: "Without a grave'-who was to dig it? show us the sexton-spade-sod? as on dry land no

*"But in suspending his voice, was the sense suspended likewise?-Did no expression of attitude or countenance fill up the chasm ?-Was the eye silent?— Did you narrowly look? I looked only at the stop-watch, my lord. Excellent Critic!"-TRISTRAM SHANDY.

man ever yet was drowned-so at sea no man ever yet w asburied but in the waters-that is at first-till the sea perhaps stamps him into the sands."

Verily, Christopher, thou art the dryest of wags-thus to endeavour to betray "us youth," and under the cloak of silliness and absurdity to animate our laughter, when, from the treachery or paucity of thy wit, thou hadst given up all hopes of eliciting our applause, and by this untoward means secure unto thyself a modicum of unaccustomed notice. We forgive thee—'twas like thyself. Have at thee again, Christie.

"The half angry-half scornful rising of the sea against the vile wrath man wields for earth's destruction' in the following lines, may pass for good-for fine to those who love falsettos. But the stanza as it grows inhuman ceases to be English-as it grows impious ceases to be grammatical; and we ask pardon of all Cockneys, alive or dead, whom we have ever calumniated,* on the score of their sins having been outsinned till they appear to be frailties that lean to virtues side,' by

Thou dashest him again to Earth-there let him lay.'

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And has he found a real grain of chaff among all the wheat? Yes! Then make him a present of it. The lines that, like Acestes' arrows, burn as they fly, may well afford an occasional stain upon their glowing plumage, or a trifling bluntness on their flashing points. Hear him again:

"Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow-'

"is a conceit, and a most impertinent one.' Again-"let us be reverent, for now the poet speaks of God:"

Thou glorious mirror where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests, &c. &c. &c.'

"We fear the transition is violent from all that death and destruction to the physicotheological view of the ocean as a mirror of the Deity; and we can have no reluctance in saying, these words are rash and will not bear reflection. Intellect comprehends them not-imagination disowns them-they are rant—perhaps cant: and all that follows to dark-heaving-boundless-endless and sublime, is laboured writing-full of noise-not fury—' signifying nothing!' That the poet felt not nor knew the meaning of his own awful words is proved by the ignorant atheism of

Even from out thy slime

The monsters of the deep are made.'"

Remember man thou art but dust, and into dust thou shalt return. Now if to say, 'Man is formed of clay' be according with all orthodox belief-as who dare dispute it?-surely there cannot be much ignorance or atheism in using as a poetical figure the notion that whales or Aberdeen ́haddees' were created from the most approved slime; and as to the lines themselves, we can easily understand the "Intellect that comprehends them not ""the Imagination that disowns them;" yet we respect our own

* We should like to know the exact number.