exertion. He had sympathised deeply with the Italian Carbonari in their efforts for freedom, but a still more interesting country and people claimed his support. His youthful travels and poetical enthusiasm still endeared the 'blue Olympus' to his recollection, and in the summer of 1823 he set sail for Greece, to aid in the struggle for its independence. His arrangements were made with judgment, as well as generosity. Byron knew mankind well, and his plans for the recovery and regeneration of Greece evinced a spirit of patriotic freedom and warm sympathy with the oppressed, happily tempered with practical wisdom and discretion. He arrived, after some danger and delay, at Missolonghi, in Western Greece, on the 4th of January 1824. All was discord and confusion-a military mob and contending chiefs-turbulence, rapacity, and fraud. In three months he had done much, by his influence and money, to compose differences, repress cruelty, and introduce order. His fluctuating and uncertain health, however, gave way under so severe a discipline. On the 9th of April he was overtaken by a heavy shower whilst taking his daily ride, and an attack of fever and rheumatism followed. Prompt and copious bleeding might have subdued the inflammation, but to this remedy Byron was strongly opposed. It was at length resorted to after seven days of increasing fever, but the disease was then too powerful for remedy. The patient sank into a state of lethargy, and, though conscious of approaching death, could only mutter some indistinct expressions about his wife, his sister, and child. He lay insensible for twenty-four hours, and, opening his eyes for a moment, shut them for ever, and expired on the evening of the 19th of April 1824. The people of Greece publicly mourned for the irreparable loss they had sustained, and the sentiment of grief was soon conveyed to the poet's native country, where his name was still a talisman, and his early death was felt by all as a personal calamity. The body of Byron was brought to England, and after lying in state in London, was interred in the family vault in the village church of Hucknall, near Newstead. Byron has been sometimes compared with Burns. Death and genius have levelled mere external distinctions, and the peer and peasant stand on the same elevation, to meet the gaze and scrutiny of posterity. Both wrote directly from strong personal feelings and impulses; both were the slaves of irregular, uncontrolled passion, and the prey of disappointed hopes and constitutional melancholy; both, by a strange perversity, loved to exaggerate their failings and dwell on their errors; and both died, after a life of extraordinary intellectual activity and excitement, at nearly the same age. We allow for the errors of Burns's position, and Byron's demands a not less tender and candid construction. Neglected in his youth-thwarted in his first love-left without control or domestic influence when his passions were strongest Lord of himself, that heritage of woeintoxicated with early success and the incense of almost universal admiration, his irregularities must be regarded more with pity than reprehension. After his unhappy marriage, the picture is clouded with darker shadows. The wild license of his continental life it would be impossible to justify. His excesses, especially intemperance, became habitual, and impaired both his genius and his strength. He struggled on with untamed pride and trembling susceptibility, but he had almost exhausted the springs of his poetry and his life; and it is too obvious that the pestilential climate of Missolonghi only accelerated an event which a few years must have consummated in Italy. The genius of Byron was as versatile as it was energetic. Childe Harold and Don Juan are perhaps the greatest poetical works of this century, and in the noble poet's tales and minor poems there is a grace, an interest, and romantic picturesqueness, that render them peculiarly fascinating to youthful readers. The Giaour has passages of still higher description and feelingparticularly that fine burst on modern Greece contrasted with its ancient glory, and the exquisitely pathetic and beautiful comparison of the same country to the human frame bereft of life : Picture of Modern Greece. He who hath bent him o'er the dead, Have swept the lines where beauty lingers, That fires not-wins not-weeps not-now, The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon; A gilded halo hovering round decay, The farewell beam of Feeling past away! Spark of that flame-perchance of heavenly birthWhich gleams-but warms no more its cherished earth! The Prisoner of Chillon is also natural and affecting: the story is painful and hopeless, but it is told with inimitable tenderness and simplicity. The reality of the scenes in Don Juan must strike every reader. Byron, it is well known, took pains to collect his materials. His account of the shipwreck is drawn from narratives of actual occurrences, and his Grecian pictures, feasts, dresses, and holiday pastimes, are literal transcripts from life. Coleridge thought the character of Lambro, and especially the description of his return, the finest of all Byron's efforts; it is more dramatic and lifelike than any other of his numerous paintings. Haidee is also the most captivating of all his heroines. His Gulnares and Medoras, his Corsairs and dark mysterious personages Linked with one virtue and a thousand crimesare monstrosities in nature, and do not possess one tithe of the interest or permanent poetical beauty that centres in the lonely residence in the Cyclades. The English descriptions in Juan are greatly inferior. There is a palpable falling off in poetical power, and the peculiar prejudices and forced ill-natured satire of the poet are brought prominently forward. Yet even here we have occasionally a flash of the early light that 'led astray.' The sketch of Aurora Raby is graceful and interesting-compared with Haidee, it is something like Fielding's Amelia coming after Sophia Western; and Newstead Abbey is described with a clearness and beauty not unworthy the author of Childe Harold. The Epicurean philosophy of the Childe is visible in every page of Don Juan, but it is no longer grave, dignified, and misanthropical: it is mixed up with wit, humour, the keenest penetration, and the most astonishing variety of expression, from colloquial carelessness and ease, to the highest and deepest tones of the lyre. The poet has the power of Mephistophiles over the scenes and passions of human life and society-disclosing their secret workings, and stripping them of all conventional allurements and disguises. Unfortunately, his knowledge is more of evil than of good. The distinctions between virtue and vice had been broken down or obscured in his own mind, and they are undistinguishable in Don Juan. Early sensuality had tainted his whole nature. He portrays generous emotions and moral feelings-distress, suffering, and pathos-and then dashes them with burlesque humour, wild profanity, and unseasonable mockery. In Childe Harold we have none of this moral anatomy, or its accompanying licentiousness; but there is abundance of scorn and defiance of the ordinary pursuits and ambition of mankind. The fairest portions of the earth are traversed in a spirit of bitterness and desolation by one satiated with pleasure, contemning society, the victim of a dreary and hopeless scepticism. Such a character would have been repulsive if the poem had not been adorned with the graces of animated description, and original and striking sentiment. The poet's sketches of Spanish and Grecian scenery, and his glimpses of the life and manners of the classic mountaineers, are as true as were ever transferred to canvas; and not less striking are the meditations of the Pilgrim on the particular events which adorned or cursed the soil he trod. Thus, on the field of Albuera, he conjures up a noble image: Red Battle-The Demon of War. Hark! heard you not those hoofs of dreadful note? Red Battle stamps his foot, and nations feel the shock. Lo! where the giant on the mountain stands, Destruction cowers to mark what deeds are done; To shed before his shrine the blood he deems most sweet. In surveying the ruins of Athens, the spirit of Byron soars to its loftiest flight, picturing its fallen glories, and indulging in the most touching and magnificent strain of his sceptical philosophy. Ancient Greece. Ancient of days! august Athena! where, First in the race that led to glory's goal, They won, and passed away-is this the whole ? A school-boy's tale, the wonder of an hour! The warrior's weapon, and the sophist's stole, Are sought in vain, and o'er each mouldering tower, Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power. Son of the morning, rise! approach you here! Come, but molest not yon defenceless urn: Look on this spot-a nation's sepulchre ! Abode of gods, whose shrines no longer burn. Even gods must yield-religions take their turn: 'Twas Jove's-'tis Mahomet's-and other creeds Will rise with other years, till man shall learn Vainly his incense soars, his victim bleeds; Poor child of Doubt and Death, whose hope is built on reeds. Bound to the earth, he lifts his eye to heavenIs 't not enough, unhappy thing! to know Thou art? Is this a boon so kindly given, That being, thou wouldst be again, and go, Thou know'st not, reck'st not, to what region, so On earth no more, but mingled with the skies? Still wilt thou dream on future joy and woe? Regard and weigh yon dust before it flies: That little urn saith more than thousand homilies. Or burst the vanished hero's lofty mound: He fell, and falling, nations mourned around : Look on its broken arch, its ruined wall, Its chambers desolate, and portals foul: Yes, this was once ambition's airy hall, The dome of thought, the palace of the soul: Behold through each lack-lustre eyeless hole, The gay recess of wisdom and of wit, And passion's host, that never brooked control: Can all saint, sage, or sophist ever writ, People this lonely tower, this tenement refit? Well didst thou speak, Athena's wisest son! With brain-born dreams of evil all their own. Pursue what chance or fate proclaimeth best ; Peace waits us on the shores of Acheron : There no forced banquet claims the sated guest, But silence spreads the couch of ever-welcome rest. Yet if, as holiest men have deemed, there be A land of souls beyond that sable shore, To shame the doctrine of the Sadducee And sophists, madly vain of dubious lore, How sweet it were in concert to adore With those who made our mortal labours light! To hear each voice we feared to hear no more! Behold each mighty shade revealed to sight, The Bactrian, Samian sage, and all who taught the right! The third canto of Childe Harold is more deeply imbued with a love of nature than any of his previous productions. A new power had been imparted to him on the shores of the Leman lake. He had just escaped from the strife of London and his own domestic unhappiness, and his conversations with Shelley might have turned him more strongly to this pure poetical source. of Wordsworth had also unconsciously lent its The poetry influence. An evening scene by the side of the lake is thus exquisitely described: Lake Leman (Geneva). Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake, To waft me from distraction; once I loved That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved. It is the hush of night; and all between He is an evening reveller, who makes Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven! A forcible contrast to this still scene is then given in a brief description of the same landscape during a thunder-storm: The sky is changed !—and such a change! O night, And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong, Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light Of a dark eye in woman! Far along From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, Leaps the live thunder! not from one lone cloud, But every mountain now hath found a tongue, And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud! And this is in the night: most glorious night! Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be A sharer in thy fierce and far delightA portion of the tempest and of thee! How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea, And the big rain comes dancing to the earth! And now again 'tis black-and now the glee Of the loud hill shakes with its mountain-mirth, As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth. In the fourth canto there is a greater throng of images and objects. The poet opens with a sketch of the peculiar beauty and departed greatness of Venice, rising from the sea, with her tiara of his pilgrimage-moralises on the scenes of Peproud towers in airy distance. He then resumes trarch and Tasso, Dante and Boccaccio-and visits the lake of Thrasimene and the temple of Clitumnus. Temple of Clitumnus. But thou, Clitumnus! in thy sweetest wave Of the most living crystal that was e'er And most serene of aspect and most clear! Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters, And on thy happy shore a temple still, Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps The Greek statues at Florence are then inimitably described, after which the poet visits Rome, and revels in the ruins of the Palatine and Coliseum, and the glorious remains of ancient art. We give two of these portraitures : Statue of Apollo. Or view the Lord of the unerring bow, The God of life, and poesy, and lightThe Sun in human limbs arrayed, and brow All radiant from his triumph in the fight; The shaft hath just been shot-the arrow bright With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye And nostril beautiful disdain, and might And majesty, flash their full lightnings by, Developing in that one glance the Deity. But in his delicate form-a dream of Love, All that ideal beauty ever blessed The mind within its most unearthly mood, When each conception was a heavenly guestA ray of immortality-and stood Starlike, around, until they gathered to a god! The Gladiator. I see before me the gladiator lie: He leans upon his hand; his manly brow Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won. He heard it, but he heeded not; his eyes All this rushed with his blood. Shall he expire, And unavenged? Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire! The poem concludes abruptly with an apostrophe to the sea, his joy of youthful sports,' and a source of lofty enthusiasm and pleasure in his solitary wanderings on the shores of Italy and Greece. Apostrophe to the Ocean. There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean-roll! His steps are not upon thy paths-thy fields For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, The armaments which thunder-strike the walls Thy shores are empires, changed in all save theeAssyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters washed them power while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thou; Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play. Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow: Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now. Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy An Italian Evening on the Banks of the Brenta. From Childe Harold. The moon is up, and yet it is not nightSunset divides the sky with her-a sea Of glory streams along the alpine height Of blue Friuli's mountains: heaven is free From clouds, but of all colours seems to be Melted to one vast Iris of the west, Where the day joins the past eternity; While on the other hand, meek Dian's crest Floats through the azure air-an island of the blest. A single star is at her side, and reigns Filled with the face of heaven, which, from afar, And now they change; a paler shadow strews The last still loveliest, till-'tis gone-and all is gray. Midnight Scene in Rome.-From Manfred' I learned the language of another world. 'Midst the chief relics of all-mighty Rome: And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon The dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule The following extracts are from Don Juan: The Shipwreck. 'Twas twilight, and the sunless day went down Then rose from sea to sky the wild farewell Then shrieked the timid, and stood still the braveThen some leaped overboard with dreadful yell, As eager to anticipate their grave; And the sea yawned around her like a hell, And down she sucked with her the whirling wave, And first one universal shriek there rushed, A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry ... There were two fathers in this ghastly crew, But he died early; and when he was gone, I can do nothing;' and he saw him thrown The other father had a weaklier child, Little he said, and now and then he smiled, And o'er him bent his sire, and never raised And when the wished for shower at length was come, The boy expired-the father held the clay, And looked upon it long; and when at last Death left no doubt, and the dead burden lay Stiff on his heart, and pulse and hope were past, He watched it wistfully, until away 'Twas borne by the rude wave wherein 'twas cast; Then he himself sunk down all dumb and shivering, And gave no sign of life, save his limbs quivering. Description of Haidee. Her brow was overhung with coins of gold That sparkled o'er the auburn of her hair; Her clustering hair, whose longer locks were rolled In braids behind; and though her stature were Even of the highest for a female mould, They nearly reached her heels; and in her air Her hair, I said, was auburn ; but her eyes Ne'er with such force the swiftest arrow flew: 'Tis as the snake late coiled, who pours his length, And hurls at once his venom and his strength. Her brow was white and low; her cheek's pure dye, (A race of mere impostors when all 's doneI've seen much finer women, ripe and real, Than all the nonsense of their stone ideal). Haidee visits the shipwrecked Don Juan. And down the cliff the island virgin came, And near the cave her quick light footsteps drew, While the sun smiled on her with his first flame, And young Aurora kissed her lips with dew, Taking her for her sister; just the same Mistake you would have made on seeing the two, And when into the cavern Haidee stepped And wrapt him closer, lest the air, too raw, And thus, like to an angel o'er the dying Who die in righteousness, she leaned; and there All tranquilly the shipwrecked boy was lying, As o'er him lay the calm and stirless air: |