notes; and, while giving up his claim on the score of rank, he takes care to remember us of Dr. Johnson's saying, that when a nobleman appears as an author, his merit should be handsomely acknowledged. In truth, it is this consideration only that induces us to give Lord Byron's poems a place in our review, beside our desire to counsel him, that he do forthwith abandon poetry, and turn his talents, which are considerable, and his opportunities, which are great, to better account. With this view, we must beg leave seriously to assure him, that the mere rhyming of the final syllable, even when accompanied by the presence of a certain number of feet,nay, although (which does not always happen) those feet should scan regularly, and have been all counted accurately upon the fingers, is not the whole art of poetry. We would entreat him to believe, that a certain portion of liveliness, somewhat of fancy, is necessary to constitute a poem, and that a poem in the present day, to be read, must contain at least one thought, either in a little degree different from the ideas of former writers, or differently expressed. We put it to his candour, whether there is anything so deserving the name of poetry in verses like the following, written in 1806; and whether, if a youth of eighteen could say anything so uninteresting to his ancestors, a youth of nineteen should publish it: "Shades of heroes, farewell! your descendant, departing "Though a tear dim his eye at this sad separation, "That fame, and that memory, still will he cherish; When decay'd, may he mingle his dust with your own." Now, we positively do assert, that there is nothing better than these stanzas in the whole compass of the noble minor's volume. Lord Byron should also have a care of attempting what the greatest poets have done before him, for comparisons (as he must have had occasion to see at his writing-master's) are odious. Gray's Ode on Eton College should really have kept out the ten hobbling stanzas "On a distant View of the Village and School of Harrow." "Where fancy yet joys to retrace the resemblance Of comrades, in friendship and mischief allied, In like manner, the exquisite lines of Mr. Rogers, "On a Tear," might have warned the noble author off those premises, and spared us a whole dozen such stanzas as the following: "Mild Charity's glow, to us mortals below, Compassion will melt where this virtue is felt, "The man doom'd to sail with the blast of the gale, As he bends o'er the wave, which may soon be his grave, And so of instances in which former poets have failed. Thus, we do not think Lord Byron was made for translating, during his nonage, "Adrian's Address to his Soul," when Pope succeeded so indifferently in the attempt. If our readers, however, are of another opinion, they may look at it. "Ah! gentle, fleeting, wavering sprite, To what unknown region borne But pallid, cheerless, and forlorn." However, be this as it may, we fear his translations and imitations are great favourites with Lord Byron, We have them of all kinds, from Anacreon to Ossian; and, viewing them as school excercises, they may pass. Only, why print them after they have had their day and served their turn? And why call the thing in p. 79. a translation, where two words (0λa A) of the original are expanded into four lines, and the other thing in p. 81.†, where μεσονυκτίαις ποθ' ώραις is rendered by means of six hobbling verses? As to his Ossianic poesy, we are not very good judges, being, in truth, so moderately skilled in that species of composition, that we should, in all probability, be criticising some bit of the genuine Macpherson itself, were we to express our opinion of Lord Byron's rhapsodies. If, then, the following beginning of a "Song of Bards "is by his lordship, we venture to object to it, as far as we can comprehend it. "What form rises on the roar of clouds, whose dark ghost gleams on the red stream of tempests? His voice rolls on the thunder; 'tis Orla, the brown chief of Oithona. He was," &c. After detaining this "brown chief" some time, the bards conclude by giving him their advice to "raise his fair locks;" then to "spread them on the arch of the rainbow; and "to smile through the tears of the storm." Of this kind of thing there are no less than nine pages; and we can so far ven ture an opinion in their favour, that they look very like Macpherson; and we are positive they are pretty nearly as stupid and tiresome. It is a sort of privilege of poets to be egotists; but they should "use it as not abusing it ;" and particularly one who piques himself (though indeed at the ripe age of nineteen) on being " an infant bard," (" The artless Helicon I boast is youth")-should either not know, or should seem not to know, so much about his own ancestry. Besides a poem above cited, on the family seat of the Byrons, we have another of eleven pages, on the self-same subject, introduced with an apology," he certainly had no intention of inserting it," but really "the particular request of some friends,' &c. &c. It concludes with five stanzas on himself," the last and youngest of a noble line." There is a good deal also about his maternal ancestors, in a poem on Lachin y Gair, a mountain where he spent part of his youth, and might have learnt that pibroch is not a bagpipe, any more than duet means a fiddle. " As the author has dedicated so large a part of his volume to immortalise his employments at school and college, we cannot possibly dismiss it without presenting the reader with a specimen of these ingenious effusions. In an ode with a Greek motto, called Granta, we have the following magnificent stanzas: "There, in apartments small and damp, From authors of historic use, The square of the hypothenuse. "Still harmless are these occupations, That hurt none but the hapless student, Which bring together the imprudent." We are sorry to hear so bad an account of the college psalmody as is contained in the following Attic stanzas : — "Our choir would scarcely be excused Even as a band of raw beginners; All mercy now must be refused To such a set of croaking sinners. "If David, when his toils were ended, Had heard these blockheads sing before him, In furious mood he would have tore 'em!" But, whatever judgment may be passed on the poems of this noble minor, it seems we must take them as we find them, and be content; for they are the last we shall ever have from him. He is, at best, he says, but an intruder into the groves of Parnassus : he never lived in a garret, like thorough-bred poets; and "though he once roved a careless mountaineer in the Highlands of Scotland," he has not of late enjoyed this advantage. Moreover, he expects no profit from his publication; and, whether it succeeds or not, "it is highly improbable, from his situation and pursuits hereafter," that he should again condescend to become an author. Therefore, let us take what we get, and be thankful. What right have we poor devils to be nice? We are well off to have got so much from a man of this lord's station, who does not live in a garret, but "has the sway" of Newstead Abbey. Again we say, let us be thankful; and, with honest Sancho, bid God bless the giver, nor look the gift horse in the mouth.1 1 [The Monthly Reviewers, in those days the next in circulation to the Edinburgh, gave a much more favourable notice of the "Hours of Idleness." "These compositions (said they) are generally of a plaintive or an amatory cast, with an occasional mixture of satire; and they display both ease and strength-both pathos and fire. It will be expected that marks of juvenility and of haste should be discovered in these productions; and we seriously advise our young bard to fulfil with submissive perseverance the duties of revision and correction. We discern, in Lord Byron, a degree of mental power, and a turn of mental disposition, which render us solicitous that both should be well cultivated and wisely directed, in his career of life. He has received talents, and is accountable for the use of them. We trust that he will render them beneficial to man, and a source of real gratification to himself in declining age. Then may he properly exclaim with the Roman orator, 'Non lubet mihi deplorare vitam, quod multi, et ii docti, sæpe fecerunt; neque me vixisse pœnitet: quoniam ita vixi, ut non frustra me natum existimem."- Lord Byron repaid the Edinburgh Critique with a Satire and became himself a Monthly Reviewer.] |