natural hearts who, having not the "faculty | hymn-and now it dies away elegiac-like, as divine," have yet the "vision"-that is, the if mourning over a tomb. Vague, indefinite, power of seeing and of hearing the sights and uncertain, dream-like, and visionary all; but the sounds which genius alone can awaken, never else than beautiful; and ever and anon, bringing them from afar out of the dust and we know not why, sublime. It ceases in the dimness of evanishment. hush of night-and we awaken as if from a Mr. Bowles has been a poet for good fifty dream. Is it not even so?-In his youth years; and if his genius do not burn quite so Campbell lived where "distant isles could bright as it did some lustres bygone-yet we hear the loud Corbrechtan roar;" and somedo not say there is any abatement even of its times his poetry is like that whirlpool-the brightness: it shines with a mellower and sound as of the wheels of many chariots. Yes, also with a more cheerful light. Long ago, he happy was it for him that he had liberty to was perhaps rather too pensive-too melan- roam along the many-based, hollow-rumbling choly-too pathetic-too wo-begone-in too western coast of that unaccountable county great bereavement. Like the nightingale, he Argyleshire. The sea-roar cultivated his natu sung with a thorn at his breast-from which rally fine musical ear, and it sank too into his one wondered the point had not been broken heart. Hence is his prime Poem bright with off by perpetual pressure. Yet, though rather hope as is the sunny sea when sailor's sweetmonotonous, his strains were most musical as hearts on the shore are looking out for ships; well as melancholy; feeling was often re- and from a foreign station down comes the lieved by fancy; and one dreamed, in listening fleet before the wind, and the very shells beto his elegies, and hymns, and sonnets, of neath their footsteps seem to sing for joy. As moonlit rivers flowing through hoary woods, for Gertrude of Wyoming, we love her as if and of the yellow sands of dim-imaged seas she were our own only daughter-filling our murmuring round "the shores of old Ro- life with bliss, and then leaving it desolate mance." A fine enthusiasm too was his-in Even now we see her ghost gliding through those youthful years-inspired by the poetry those giant woods! As for Lochiel's Warnof Greece and Rome; and in some of his hap-ing, there was heard the voice of the Last of piest inspirations there was a delightful and original union-to be found nowhere else that we can remember-of the spirit of that ancient song-the pure classical spirit that murmured by the banks of the Eurotas and Ilissus with that of our own poetry, that like a noble Naiad dwells in the "clear well of English undefiled." In almost all his strains you felt the scholar; but his was no affected or pedantic scholarship-intrusive most when least required; but the growth of a consummate classical education, of which the career was not It was said many long years ago in the inglorious among the towers of Oxford. Bowles Edinburgh Review, that none but maudlin was a pupil of the Wartons-Joe and Tom-milliners and sentimental ensigns supposed God bless their souls!-and his name may be joined, not unworthily, with theirs-and with Mason's, and Gray's, and Collins's-academics all; the works of them all showing a delicate and exquisite colouring of classical art, enriching their own English nature. Bowles's muse is always loath to forget-wherever she roam or linger-Winchester and Oxford-the Itchin and the Isis. None educated in those delightful and divine haunts will ever forget them, who can read Homer and Pindar, and Sophocles, and Theocritus, and Bion, and Moschus, in the original; Rhedicyna's ungrateful or renegade sons are those alone who pursued their poetical studies-in translations. They never knew the nature of the true old Greek

the Seers. The Second Sight is now extin guished in the Highland glooms-the Lament wails no more,

"That man may not hide what God would reveal!"

The Navy owes much to "Ye mariners of England." Sheer hulks often seemed ships till that strain arose-but ever since in our imagination have they brightened the roaring ocean. And dare we say, after that, that Campbell has never written a Great Poem? Yesin the face even of the Metropolitan !

that James Montgomery was a poet. Then is Maga a maudlin milliner-and Christopher North a sentimental ensign. We once called Montgomery a Moravian; and though he assures us that we were mistaken, yet having made an assertion, we always stick to it, and therefore he must remain a Moravian, if not in his own belief, yet in ours. Of all religious sects, the Moravians are the most simpleminded, pure-hearted, and high-souled-and these qualities shine serenely in the Pelican Island. In earnestness and fervour, that poem is by few or none excelled; it is embalmed in sincerity, and therefore shall fa le not away; neither shall it moulder-not even although exposed to the air, and blow the air ever so rudely through time's mutations. Not that it is a mummy. Say rather a fair form laid asleep in immortality-its face wearing, day and night, summer and winter, look at it when you will, a saintly-a celestial smile. That is a true image; but is the Pelican Island a Great Poem? We pause not for a reply.

Lyrical Poetry, we opine, hath many branches and one of them "beautiful exceedingly" with bud, blossom, and fruit of balm and bright ness, round which is ever heard the murmur of bees and of birds, hangs trailingly along the mossy greensward when the air is calm

and ever and ancn, when blow the fitful breezes, | What has been the result? Seven volumes it is uplifted in the sunshine, and glows wav- (oh! why not seven more?) of poetry, as ingly aloft, as if it belonged even to the loftiest beautiful as ever charmed the ears of Pan and region of the Tree which is Amaranth. That of Apollo. The earth-the middle air-the sky is a fanciful, perhaps foolish form of expres--the heaven-the heart, mind, and soul of sion, employed at present to signify Song-writ-man-are "the haunt and main region of his ing. Now, of all the song-writers that ever song." In describing external nature as she is, warbled, or chanted, or sung, the best, in our no poet perhaps has excelled Wordsworthestimation, is verily none other than Thomas not even Thomson; in embuing her and makMoore. True that Robert Burns has indited ing her pregnant with spiritualities, till the many songs that slip into the heart, just like mighty mother teems with "beauty far more light, no one knows how, filling its chambers beauteous" than she had ever rejoiced in till sweetly and silently, and leaving it nothing such communion-he excels all the brothermore to desire for perfect contentment. Or hood. Therein lies his special glory, and let us say, sometimes when he sings, it is like therein the immortal evidences of the might listening to a linnet in the broom, a blackbird of his creative imagination. All men at times in the brake, a laverock in the sky. They sing "muse on nature with a poet's eye," but in the fulness of their joy, as nature teaches Wordsworth ever-and his soul has grown them-and so did he; and the man, woman, or more and more religious from such worship. child, who is delighted not with such singing, Every rock is an altar-every grove a shrine. be their virtues what they may, must never We fear that there will be sectarians even in hope to be in Heaven. Gracious Providence this Natural Religion till the end of time. placed Burns in the midst of the sources of But he is the High Priest of Nature-or, to use Lyrical Poetry—when he was born a Scottish his own words, or nearly so, he is the High peasant. Now, Moore is an Irishman, and Priest "in the metropolitan temple built in the was born in Dublin. Moore is a Greek scholar, heart of mighty poets." But has he even he and translated-after a fashion-Anacreon.-ever written a Great Poem? If he has-it And Moore has lived much in towns and cities is not the Excursion. Nay, the Excursion is -and in that society whch will suffer none not a Poem. It is a Series of Poems, all else to be called good. Some advantages he swimming in the light of poetry; some of has enjoyed which Burns never did-but then them sweet and simple, some elegant and how many disadvantages has he undergone, graceful, some beautiful and most lovely, some from which the Ayrshire Ploughman, in the of "strength and state," some majestic, some bondage of his poverty, was free! You see magnificent, some sublime. But though it all that at a single glance into their poetry. has an opening, it has no beginning; you can But all in humble life is not high-all in high discover the middle only by the numerals on life is not low; and there is as much to guard the page; and the most serious apprehensions against in hovel as in hall-in "auld clay- have been very generally entertained that it bigging" as in marble palace. Burns some- has no end. While Pedlar, Poet, and Solitary times wrote like a mere boor-Moore has too breathe the vital air, may the Excursion, stop often written like a mere man of fashion. But where it will, be renewed; and as in its pretake them both at their best-and both are ini- sent shape it comprehends but a Three Days' mitable. Both are national poets-and who Walk, we have but to think of an Excursion hall say, that if Moore had been born and of three weeks, three months, or three years, bred a peasant, as Burns was, and if Ireland to have some idea of Eternity. Then the life had been such a land of knowledge, and virtue, of man is not always limited to the term of and religion as Scotland is—and surely, with- threescore and ten years. What a Journal out offence, we may say that it never was, and might it prove at last! Poetry in profusion never will be-though we love the Green till the land overflowed; but whether in one Island well-that with his fine fancy, warm volume, as now, or in fifty, in future, not a heart, and exquisite sensibilities, he might not Great Poem-nay, not a Poem at all-nor ever have been as natural a lyrist as Burns; while, to be so esteemed, till the principles on which take him as he is, who can deny that in rich- Great Poets build the lofty rhyme are exploded, ness, in variety, in grace, and in the power of and the very names of Art and Science smoth art, he is superior to the ploughman. Of Lal-ered and lost in the bosom of Nature from lah Rookh and the Loves of the Angels, we which they arose. defy you to read a page without admiration ; but the question recurs, and it is easily answered, we need not say in the negative, did Moore ever write a Great Poem?

Let us make a tour of the Lakes. Rydal Mount! Wordsworth! The Bard! Here is the man who has devoted his whole life to poetry. It is his profession. He is a poet just as his brother is a clergyman. He is the Head of the Lake School, just as his brother is Master of Trinity. Nothing in this life and in this world has he had to do, beneath sun, moon and stars, but

"To murmur by the living brooks
A music sweeter than their own."

Let the dullest clod that ever vegetated, provided only he be alive and hear, be shut up in a room with Coleridge, or in a wood, and sub jected for a few minutes to the ethereal influence of that wonderful man's monologue, and he will begin to believe himself a Poet. The barren wilderness may not blossom like the rose, but it will seem, or rather feel to do so, under the lustre of an imagination exhaustless as the sun. You may have seen perhaps rocks suddenly so glorified by sunlight with colours manifold, that the bees seek them, deluded by the show of flowers. The sun, you know, does not always show his orb even in the daytimeand people are often ignorant of his place in

What a world would this be were all its inhabitants to fiddle like Paganini, ride like Ducrow, discourse like Coleridge, and do every thing else in a style of equal perfection! But pray, how does a man write poetry with a pen upon paper, who thus is perpetually pouring it from his inspired lips? Read the Ancient Mariner, the Nightingale, and Genevieve. In the first, you shudder at the superstition of the sea-in the second, you thrill with the melo dies of the woods-in the third, earth is like heaven ;-for you are made to feel that

"All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame
All are but ininisters of Love,
And feed his sacred flame!"

Has Coleridge, then, ever written a Great
Poem? No; for besides the Regions of the
Fair, the Wild, and the Wonderful, there is
another up to which his wing might not soar;
though the plumes are strong as soft. But
why should he who loveth to take "the wings
of a dove that he may flee away" to the bo-
som of beauty, though there never for a mo-
ment to be at rest-why should he, like an
eagle, soar into the storms that roll above this
visible diurnal sphere in peals of perpetual
thunder?

the firmament. But he keeps shining away at on "honey-dew," and by lips that have "breathhis leisure, as you would know were he to suf- ed the air of Paradise," and learned a seraphic fer eclipse. Perhaps he-the sun-is at no language, which, all the while that it is Eng other time a more delightful luminary than lish, is as grand as Greek and as soft as when he is pleased to dispense his influence Italian. We only know this, that Coleridge is through a general haze, or mist-softening all the alchymist that in his crucible melts down the day till meridian is almost like the after-hours to moments-and lo! diamonds sprinkled noon, and the grove, anticipating gloaming, on a plate of gold. bursts into "dance and minstrelsy" ere the god go down into the sea. Clouds too become him well-whether thin and fleecy and braided, or piled up all round about him castle-wise and cathedral-fashion, to say nothing of temples and other metropolitan structures; nor is it reasonable to find fault with him, when, as naked as the hour he was born, "he flames on the forehead of the morning sky." The grandeur too of his appearance on setting, has become quite proverbial. Now in all this he resembles Coleridge. It is easy to talk-not very difficult to speechify-hard to speak; but to "discourse" is a gift rarely bestowed by Heaven on mortal man. Coleridge has it in perfection. While he is discoursing, the world loses all its commonplaces, and you and your wife imagine yourself Adam and Eve listening to the affable archangel Raphael in the Garden of Eden. You would no more dream of wishing him to be mute for awhile, than you would a river that "imposes silence with a stilly sound." Whether you understand two consecutive sentences, we shall not stop too curiously to inquire; but you do something better, you feel the whole just like any other divine music. And 'tis your own fault if you do not "A wiser and a better man arise to-morrow's morn." Reason is said to be one faculty, and Imagination another-but there cannot be a grosser mistake; they are one and indivisible; only in most cases they live like cat and dog, in mutual worrying, or haply sue for a divorce; whereas in the case of Coleridge they are one spirit as well as one flesh, and keep billing and cooing in a perpetual honey-moon. Then his mind is learned in all the learning of the Egyptians, as well as the Greeks and Romans; and though we have heard simpletons say that he knows nothing of science, we have heard him on chemistry puzzle Sir Humphrey Davy-and prove to his own entire satisfaction, that Leibnitz and Newton, though good men, were but in different astronomers. Besides, he thinks nothing of inventing a new science, with a complete nomenclature, in a twinkling-and should you seem sluggish of apprehension, he endows you with an additional sense or two, over and above the usual seven, till you are no longer at a loss, be it even to scent the music of fragrance, or to hear the smell of a balmy piece of poetry. All the faculties, both of soul and sense, seem amicably to interchange their functions and their provinces; and you fear not that the dream may dissolve, persuaded that you are in a future state of permanent enjoyment. Nor are we now using any exaggeration; for if you will but think how unutterably dull are all the ordinary sayings and doings of this life, spent as it is with ordinary people, you may imagine how in sweet delirium you may be robbed of yourself by a seraphic tongue that has fed since first it lisped

Wordsworth, somewhere or other, remonstrates, rather angrily, with the Public, against her obstinate ignorance shown in persisting to put into one class, himself, Coleridge, and Southey, as birds of a feather, that not only flock together but warble the same sort of song. But he elsewhere tells us that he and Coleridge hold the same principles in the Art Poetical; and among his Lyrical Ballads he admitted the three finest compositions of his illustrious Compeer. The Public, therefore, is not to blame in taking him at his word, even if she had discerned no family likeness in their genius. Southey certainly resembles Wordsworth less than Coleridge does; but he lives at Keswick, which is but some dozen miles from Rydal, and perhaps with an unphi. losophical though pensive Public that link of connection should be allowed to be sufficient, even were there no other less patent and ma terial than the Macadamized turnpike road. But true it is and of verity, that Southey, among our living Poets, stands aloof and "alone in his glory;" for he alone of them all has adventured to illustrate, in Poems of magnitude, the different characters, customs, and manners of nations. Joan of Arc is an English and French story-Thalaba, Arabian-Kehama, Indian--Madoc, Welsh and American-and Ro derick, Spanish and Moorish; nor would it be easy to say (setting aside the first, which was a very youthful work) in which of these noble Poems Mr. Southey has most successfully per formed an achievement entirely beyond the power of any but the highest genius. In Ma.

doc, and especially in Roderick, he has relied on the truth of nature-as it is seen in the history of great national transactions and events. In Thalaba and in Kehama, though in them, too, he has brought to bear an almost boundless lore, he follows the leading of Fancy and Imagination, and walks in a world of wonders. Seldom, if ever, has one and the same Poet exhibited such power in such different kinds of Poetry-in Truth a Master, and in Fiction a Magician.

Come listen to my lay, and ye shall hear
How Madoc from the shores of Britain spread
The adventurous sail, explored the ocean path,
And quell'd barbaric power, and overthrew
The bloody altars of idolatry,

And planted on its fanes triumphantly

The Cross of Christ. Come, listen to my lay."

Of all his chief Poems the conception and the execution are original; in much faulty and im. perfect both; but bearing throughout the im press of original power; and breathing a moral charm, in the midst of the wildest and some times even extravagant imaginings, that shall preserve them for ever from oblivion, embalming them in the spirit of delight and of love. Fairy Tales-or tales of witchcraft and enchantment, seldom stir the holiest and deepest feelings of the heart; but Thalaba and Kehama do so; "the still sad music of humanity" is ever with us among all most wonderful and wild; and of all the spells, and charms, and talismans that are seen working strange effects before our eyes, the strongest are ever felt to

It is easy to assert that he draws on his vast stores of knowledge gathered from books-and that we have but to look at the multifarious accumulation of notes appended to his great Poems to see that they are not Inventions. The materials of poetry indeed are there-often the raw materials-seldom more; but the Imagination that moulded them into beautiful, or magnificent, or wondrous shapes, is all his own-and has shown itself most creative. Southey never was among the Arabians nor Hindoos, and therefore had to trust to travel-be Piety and Virtue. What exquisite pictures lers. But had he not been a Poet he might have read till he was blind, nor ever seen "The palm-grove inlanded amid the waste," where with Oneiza in her Father's Tent

"How happily the years of Thalaba went by!"

of domestic affection and bliss! what sanctity and devotion! Meek as a child is Innocence in Southey's poetry, but mightier than any giant. Whether matron or maid, mother or daughter-in joy or sorrow-as they appear before us, doing or suffering, "beautiful and dutiful," with Faith, Hope and Charity their guardian angels, nor Fear ever once crossing their path! We feel, in perusing such pictures-"Purity! thy name is woman!" and are not these Great Poems? We are silent. But should you answer "yes," from us in our present mood you shall receive no contradiction.

In what guidance but that of his own genius did he descend with the Destroyer into the Domdaniel Caves? And who showed him the Swerga's Bowers of Bliss? Who built for him with all its palaces that submarine City of the Dead, safe in its far-down silence from the superficial thunder of the sea? The greatness The transition always seems to us, we as well as the originality of Southey's genius is seen in the conception of every one of his scarcely know why, as natural as delightful Five Chief Works-with the exception of Joan from Southey to Scott. They alone of all the of Arc, which was written in very early youth, poets of the day have produced poems in which and is chiefly distinguished by a fine enthu- are pictured and narrated, epicly, national chasiasm. They are one and all National Poems racters, and events, and actions, and catastro-wonderfully true to the customs and charac-phes. Southey has heroically invaded foreign ters of the inhabitants of the countries in which are laid the scenes of all their various adventures and enterprises-and the Poet has entirely succeeded in investing with an individual interest each representative of a race. Thalaba is a true Arab-Madoc a true Briton-King Roderick indeed the Last of the Goths. Kehama is a personage whom we can be made to imagine only in Hindostan. Sir Walter confined himself in his poetry to Scotland-except in Rokeby-and his might then went not with him across the Border; though in his novels and romances he was at home when abroad and nowhere else more gloriously than with Saladin in the Desert. Lalla Rookh is full of orilliant poetry; and one of the series-the Fire Worshippers-is Moore's highest effort; but the whole is too elaborately Oriental-and often in pure weariness of all that accumulation of the gorgeous imagery of the East, we shut up the false glitter, and thank Heaven that we are in one of the bleakest and barest corners of the West. But Southey's magic is more potent and he was privileged to ex

:laim

"Come, listen to a tale of times of old!

Come, for ye know me. Iam he who framed
Of Thalaba the wild and wondrous song.

countries; Scott as heroically brought his power to bear on his own people; and both have achieved immortal triumphs. But Scotland is proud of her great national minstrel and as long as she is Scotland, will wash and warm the laurels round his brow, with rains and winds that will for ever keep brightening their glossy verdure. Whereas England, ungrateful ever to her men of genius, already often forgets the poetry of Southey; while Little Britain abuses his patriotism in his po litics. The truth is, that Scotland had forgotten her own history till Sir Walter burnished it all up till it glowed again-it is hard to say whether in his poetry or in his prose the brightestand the past became the present. We know now the character of our own people as it showed itself in war and peace-in palace, castle, hall, hut, hovel, and shieling-through centuries of advancing civilization, from the time when Edinburgh was first ycleped Auld Reekie, down to the period when the bright idea first occurred to her inhabitants to call her the Modern Athens. This he has effected by means of about one hundred volumes, each exhibiting to the life about fifty characters, and each character not only an individual in him. self or herself, but the representative-so we

offer to prove if you be skeptical-of a distinct class or order of human beings, from the Monarch to the Mendicant, from the Queen to the Gipsy, from the Bruce to the Moniplies, from Mary Stuart to Jenny Dennisoun. We shall never say that Scott is Shakspeare; but we shall say that he has conceived and createdyou know the meaning of these words-as many characters-real living flesh-and-blood human beings-naturally, truly, and consistently, as Shakspeare; who, always transcendantly great in pictures of the passions-out of their range, which surely does not comprehend all rational being-was-nay, do not threaten to murder us-not seldom an imperfect delineator of human life. All the world believed that Sir Walter had not only exhausted his own genius in his poetry, but that he had exhausted all the matter of Scottish life-he and Burns to gether and that no more ground unturned-up lay on this side of the Tweed. Perhaps he thought so too for a while-and shared in the general and natural delusion. But one morning before breakfast it occurred to him, that in all his poetry he had done little or nothingthough more for Scotland than any other of her poets-except the Ploughman-and that it would not be much amiss to commence a New Century of Inventions. Hence the Prose Tales -Novels-and Romances-fresh floods of light pouring all over Scotland-and occasionally illuminating England, France, and Germany, and even Palestine-whatever land had been ennobled by Scottish enterprise, genius, valour, and virtue.

and their Lady-loves, chiefly Scottish-f kings that fought for fame or freedom-of fatal Flod den and bright Bannockburn of the DE LIVERER. If that be not national to the teeth, Homer was no Ionian, Tyrtæus not sprung from Sparta, and Christopher North a Cockney. Let Abbotsford, then, be cognomed by those that choose it, the Ariosto of the North-we shall continue to call him plain Sir Walter. Now, we beg leave to decline answering oar own question-has he ever written a Great Poem? We do not care one straw whether he has or not; for he has done this-he has exhibited human life in a greater variety of forms and lights, all definite and distinct, than any other man whose name has reached our ears; and therefore, without fear or trembling, we tell the world to its face, that he is, out of al sight, the greatest genius of the age, not forgetting Goethe, the Devil, and Dr. Faustus.

"What? Scott a greater genius than Byron!" Yes-beyond compare. Byron had a vivid and strong, but not a wide, imagination. He saw things as they are, occasionally standing prominently and boldly out from the flat surface of this world; and in general, when his soul was up, he described them with a master's might. We speak now of the external worldof nature and of art. Now observe how he dealt with nature. In his early poems he betrayed no passionate love of nature, though we do not doubt that he felt it; and even in the first two cantos of Childe Harold he was ar unfrequent and no very devout worshipper at her shrine. We are not blaming his lukewarmness; but simply stating a fact. He had something else to think of, it would appear; and proved himself a poet. But in the third canto, "a change came over the spirit of his dream," and he "babbled o' green fields," floods, and mountains. Unfortunately, however, for his originality, that canto is almost a cento-his model being Wordsworth. His merit, whatever it may be, is limited therefore to that of imitation. And observe, the imitation is not merely occasional or verbal; but all the descriptions are conceived in the spirit of Wordsworth, coloured by it and shaped-from it they live, and breathe, and have their being; and that so entirely, that had the Excursion and Lyrical Ballads never been, neither had any composition at all resembling, either in conception or execution, the third canto of Childe Harold. His soul, however, having been awakened by the inspiration of the Bard of Nature, never afterwards fell asleep, nor got drowsy over her beauties or glories; and much

Up to the era of Sir Walter, living people had some vague, general, indistinct notions about dead people mouldering away to nothing centuries ago, in regular kirkyards and chance burial-places, "'mang muirs and mosses many O," somewhere or other in that difficultly-distinguished and very debatable district called the Borders. All at once he touched their tombs with a divining rod, and the turf streamed out ghosts, some in woodmen's dresses-most in warrior's mail: green arches leaped forth with yew-bows and quivers-and giants stalked shaking spears. The gray chronicler smiled; and, taking up his pen, wrote in lines of light the annals of the chivalrous and heroic days of auld feudal Scotland. The nation then, for the first time, knew the character of its ancestors; for those were not spectres-not they indeed-nor phantoms of the brain-but gaunt flesh and blood, or glad and glorious;-baseborn cottage churls of the olden time, because Scottish, became familiar to the love of the nation's heart, and so to its pride did the high-fine description pervades most of his subseborn lineage of palace-kings The worst of Bir Walter is, that he has harvied all Scotland. Never was there such a freebooter. He hurries all men's cattle-kills themselves off hand, and makes bonfires of their castles. Thus has he disturbed and illuminated all the land as with the blazes of a million beacons. Lakes lie with their islands distinct by midnight as by mid-day; wide woods glow gloriously in the gloom; and by the stormy splendour you even see ships, with all sails set, far at sea. His favourite themes in prose or numerous verse, are still "Knights and Lords and mighty Earls,"

quent works. He afterwards made much of what he saw his own-and even described it after his own fashion; but a greater in that domain was his instructor and guide-nor in his noblest efforts did he ever make any close approach to those inspired passages, which he had manifestly set as models before his imagi nation. With all the fair and great objects in the world of art, again, Byron dealt like a poet of original genius. They themselves, and not descriptions of them, kindled it up; and thus "thoughts that breathe, and words that burn," do almost entirely compose the fourth cantc