familiar range through the wide regions of fancy, associating in its uncontrolled freedom, with all it met of the beautiful and sublime, and returning laden with the rich spoils of its excursive wanderings, to be deposited in the Alembic, from whence the world may draw them. Gifted with a strong perception of all that is grand and lofty in the appearances or operations of visible nature, and with a mind attuned to all the higher and more exalted sympathies of our beings; he spurned at those restraints with which other men suffer their genius to be shackled, and indulged in all the boundless luxuriance of his wild and fertile imagination.

In the cursory notice which we propose to take of the Noble Poet, it will not be expected we should go into any lengthened detail, either biographical or critical, much less are we inclined to insert the trashy impositions forced upon the Public through the medium of some of the Magazines, as the recollections of his intimate friends, but, in fact, being nothing more than the vague conjectures and scandalous stories of the unprincipled and prejudiced. Every admirer of his works must lament the destruction of his Memoirs, consigned by his friend, Thomas Moore to the keeping of John Murray, the bookseller of Albemarle-street, who, taking advantage of a temporary loan thereon, took upon himself to negociate with the relations, and other persons interested in the suppression of certain facts contained therein, for the destruction of the whole, but, not before repayment of the sum of money he had advanced to Moore. The real motives for this

trespass upon the intentions of the writer, and serious loss to the Public, have never yet been made known, and perhaps never may; but we may be allowed to hint, there was (in our opinion) something more political* than moral in the transaction. Of the interest the MS. must have excited in the public mind, we have a convincing proof in the following poem, entitled, REFlecTIONS ON LORD BYRON, WHEN ABOUT TO READ HIS MEMOIRS WRITTEN BY HIMSELF:

BY THOMAS MOORE.

Let me a moment,-ere with fear and hope
Of gloomy, glorious things, these leaves I ope-
As one, in fairy tale, to whom the key

Of some enchanter's secret hall is given,
Doubts, while he enters, slowly, tremblingly,

If he shall meet with shapes from hell or heaven-
Let me a moment, think what thousands live
O'er the wide earth this instant, who would give,
Gladly, whole sleepless nights, to bend the brow
Over these precious leaves, as I do now.

How all who know-and where is he unknown?
To what far region have his songs not flown,
Like Psaphon's birds, speaking their master's name,
In every language, syllabled by Fame?

How all, who've felt the various spells combin'd
Within the circle of that splendid mind,

Like pow'rs, deriv'd from many a star, and met
Together in some wond'rous amulet,

Would burn to know when first the light awoke
In his young soul,—and if the gleams that broke
From that Aurora of his genius, raised

More bliss or pain in those on whom they blaz’d—

* The Memoirs are said to have contained, among other topics, certain strictures of no very pleasant nature upon the Whigs of England. Could not Lord Holland unravel something of this mystery?

Would love to trace th' unfolding of that power,
Which hath grown ampler, grander, every hour,
And feel, in watching o'er its first advance,

As did the Egyptian traveller*, when he stood
By the young Nile, and fathom'd with his lance

The first small fountains of that mighty flood.
They, too, who, 'mid the scornful thoughts that dwell
In his rich fancy, tinging all its streams,

As if the star of bitterness, which fell

On earth of old, had touched them with its beams,
Can trick a spirit, which, though driven to hate,
From Nature's hand came kind, affectionate;
And which, ev'n now, struck as it is with blight,
Comes out, at times, in love's own native light-
How gladly all who've watch'd these struggling rays
Of a bright, ruin'd spirit through his lays,
Would here inquire, as from his own frank lips,

What desolating grief, what wrongs had driven
That noble nature into cold eclipse-

Like some fair orb that, once a sun in heaven,
And born not only to surprise, but cheer
With warmth and lustre all within its sphere,
Is now so quench'd, that of its grandeur lasts
Naught, but the wide, cold shadow which it casts!
Eventful volume! whatsoe'er the change

Of scene and clime-th' adventures, bold and strange-
The griefs-the frailties, but too frankly told-

The loves, the feuds thy pages may unfold,
If truth with half so prompt a hand unlocks
His virtues as his failings-we shall find
The record there of friendships, held like rocks,

And enmities like sun-touch'd snow resign'd

Of fealty, cherish'd without change or chill,
In those who serv'd him young, and serve him still-
Of generous aid, giv'n with that noiseless art
Which wakes not pride, to many a wounded heart-
Of acts-but no- -not from himself must aught
Of the bright features of his life be sought.

* Bruce.

?

While they, who court the world, like Milton's cloud*,
Turn forth their silver lining" on the crowd,
This gifted Being wraps himself in night,
And, keeping all that softens, and adorns,
And gilds his social nature hid from sight,
Turns but its darkness on a world he scorns.

We cannot perhaps better confirm our own opinion of his great merits, than by inserting here the just, but glowing eulogy on the departed Luminary, from the pen of his highly-gifted Compeer:

CHARACTER OF LORD BYRON,

BY SIR WALTER SCOTT.

Amidst the general calmness of the political atmosphere, we have been stunned from another quarter, by one of those death-notes which are. pealed at intervals, as from an archangel's trumpet, to awaken the soul of a whole people at once. Lord Byron, who has so long and so amply filled the public eye, has shared the lot of humanity. That mighty genius, which walked amongst men as something superior to ordinary mortality, and whose powers were beheld with wonder, and something approaching to terror, as if we knew not whether they were of good or of evil, is laid as soundly to rest as the poor peasant whose ideas never went beyond his daily task. The voice of just blame and of malignant censure are at once silenced; and we feel almost as if the great luminary of heaven had suddenly dis

*"Did a sable cloud

Turn forth her silver lining on the night?"-Comus.

appeared from the sky, at the moment when every telescope was levelled for the examination of the spots which dimmed its brightness. It is not now the question what were Byron's faults, what his mistakes; but how is the blank which he has left in British literature to be filled up? Not, we fear, in one generation, which, among many highly-gifted persons, has produced none who approached Byron in Originality, the first attribute of genius. Only thirty-seven years old: so much already done for immortality, so much time remaining, as it seems to us, short-sighted mortals, to maintain and to extend his fame, and to atone for errors in conduct and levities in composition. Who will not grieve that such a race has been shortened, though not always keeping the straight path; such a light extinguished, though sometimes flaming to dazzle and to bewilder: one word on this ungrateful subject ere we quit it for ever.

The errors of Lord Byron arose neither from depravity of heart,-for nature had not committed the anomaly of uniting to such extraordinary talents an imperfect moral sense,-nor from feelings dead to the admiration of virtue. No man had ever a kinder heart for sympathy, or a more open hand for the relief of distress; and no mind was ever more formed for the enthusiastic admiration of noble actions, provided he was convinced that the actors had proceeded on disinterested principles. Lord Byron was totally free from the curse and degradation of literature, -its jealousies, we mean, and its envy. But his wonderful genius was of a nature which disdained