The whole of the poem is like a long and wild strain of beautiful, but melancholy, music. It is like the waking of an Eolian harpthe sweeping of rushing and rapid thoughts-some sad and some exulting, but all wild and tender-over the chords of a heart attuned to the most harmonious sounds, and breathing melody in every note. It closes with a proud and prophetic burst, in which the poet says that the cell in which he is imprisoned shall form in future the first renown of Ferrara, and that the haughty lady of his love shall only enjoy immortality from the breathings of his passion:

While thou, Ferrara! when no longer dwell

The ducal chiefs within thee, shalt fall down,

And crumbling piecemeal view thy hearthless halls,
A poet's wreath shall be thine only crown,

A poet's dungeon thy most far renown,

While strangers wonder o'er thy unpeopled walls!
And thou, Leonora! thou-who wert ashamed

That such as I could love-who blushed to hear
To less than monarchs that thou couldst be dear,
Go! tell thy brother that my heart, untamed
By grief, years, weariness-and it may be
A taint of that he would impute to me→
From long infection of a den like this,
Where the mind rots congenial with the abyss,
Adores thee still;-and add-that when the towers
And battlements which guard his joyous hours
Of banquet, dance, and revel, are forgot,
Or left untended in a dull repose,
This-this shall be a consecrated spot!

But Thou-when all that birth and beauty throws
Of magic round thee is extinct-shalt have
One half the laurel which o'ershades my grave.

No power in death can tear our names apart,
As none in life could rend thee from my heart.
Yes, Leonora ! it shall be our fate

To be entwined for ever-but too late!

Some of the prose letters of Tasso, which have been preserved by his

various biographers, and particularly by Mr. Hobhouse, in his Illustrations of the fourth canto of his noble friend's Childe Harold,' are filled with the most touching expressions. In one of them, addressed to Scipio Gonzaga, he says:

And the fear that my imprisonment may last for ever, and the indignities to which I am exposed, and the illness under which I suffer, and the filthiness of my beard, my hair, and my clothes, and the sorry quality of them, and the vile smells, annoy me dreadfully. Above all, too, the solitude afflicts me, that cruel and natural enemy of mine, by which, even in happier times, I was so much oppressed that I used always to fly from it to society.'

In another, written to his friend Cataneo a few months before his release, he says:

⚫O, Signor Maurizio, when will the day arrive that I may behold the open heavens, and that I shall be freed from the pain of having a barred door between me and the world, even when I have need of a physician, or a confessor ?'

These letters are given in Mr. Hobhouse's Illustrations' in the original Italian, from which we have translated them. The following is that gentleman's own translation of a letter, perhaps, more painful to read, although there is less of direct appeal to the feelings of the person to whom it is addressed:

'A thousand traits in the life of Tasso serve to show that genius was considered the property, not of the individual, but his patron; and that the reward allotted for this appropriation was dealt out with jealous avarice. The author of the 'Jerusalem,' when he was at the height of his favour at the court of Ferrara, could not redeem the covering of his body and bed, which he was obliged to leave in pledge for thirteen crowns and forty-five lire on accompanying the Cardinal of Este to France. This circumstance appears from a testamentary document preserved in manuscript in the public library of Ferrara, which is imperfectly copied into the Life of Tasso ;' and the following letter is extracted from the same collection of autographs, as a singular exemplification of what has been before said of princely patronage:

'My very magnificent Signor,

'I send your worship five shirts, all of which want mending. Give them to your relation; and let him know that I do not wish them to be mixed with the others, and that he will gratify me by coming one day with you to see me. In the mean while I wait for that

answer which your lordship promised to solicit for me. Put your friend in mind of it. I kiss your worship's hand.

Your very faithful servant,

'From S. Anna, the 4th of Jan. 1585.

TORQUATO TASSO.

If you cannot come with your relation, come alone. I want to speak to you. And get the cloth washed in which the shirts are wrapped up.

To the very magnificent Signor,

the Signor Luca' Scalabrino.'

Such was the condition of him who thought that, besides God, to the poet alone belonged the name of creator, and who was also persuaded that he himself was the first Italian of that divine race.'

Lord Byron, with the appearance of being an idle man, was as hardworking a writer as ever lived. A day never passed without his collecting or arranging materials for composition-perhaps never without his actually producing something. Every step that he had taken upon the classic ground of Italy had awakened some reflection full of interest. Even the time he had passed in riotous indulgence had not been wholly lost; and Venice was associated in his mind with feelings of respect for her past glories, and with bitter and burning indignation for her present degraded condition.

Rome, the eternal city, grand in its desolation, and clothed with majesty even in its ruins, was a rich source of inspiration to him; and his mind thus fraught with deep and fervent feelings, he resolved to embody them in that powerful poetry which was worthy to express them, and to send them into the world. For this purpose he set about the fourth canto of his 'Childe Harold,' with which he completed aud closed this his finest poem. The canto of which we now speak was worthy to be the finish of such a work. It was a glorious crown to the whole; and, like the sinking sun, it made a golden setting,' splendid and gorgeous in itself, and casting a parting refulgence upon that lay beneath its beam.

all

Lord Byron prefaced this poem with a dedication to his friend Mr. Hobhouse, which is affectionate and eloquent, and an honorable testimony to the feelings and worth as well of the writer as of the person to whom it is addressed. Lord Byron enumerates shortly, but powerfully, the circumstances by which his friendship for Mr. Hobhouse had been cemented, and whom he calls one whom I have known long and accompanied far; whom I have found wakeful over my sickness, and kind in my sorrow; glad in my prosperity, and firm in my adversity;

true in counsel, and trusty in peril ;-a friend often tried, and never found wanting.'

The poem opens with the meditations of the pilgrim on the state of Venice, as he stands upon a bridge communicating between the ducal palace and the prison:

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
A palace and a prison on each hand:

I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying Glory smiles.

O'er the far times, when many a subject land
Looked to the winged Lion's marble piles,

Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!

She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,
Rising with her tiara of proud towers

At airy distance, with majestic motion,

A ruler of the waters and their powers:

And such she was;-her daughters had their dowers
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East
Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.
In purple was she robed, and of her feast
Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased.
In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more,
And silent rows the songless gondolier;
Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,

And music meets not always now the ear:
Those days are gone-but Beauty still is here.
States fall, arts fadc-but Nature doth not die;
Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,
The pleasant place of all festivity,

The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!

It is not often that Lord Byron condescends in his poems to avow any patriotic feelings: that he entertained them no one who knew any thing of his heart or character can doubt. The following stanzas are delightful for the expression of such sentiments; and the allusion in the beginning of the second, while it excites emotions deeply painful, conveys the notion (perhaps only a superstition, but still a superstition

of the better sort) that the undying spirits of the dead still inhabit and hallow the places of their affection:

I've taught me other tongues-and in strange eyes

Have made me not a stranger; to the mind
Which is itself, no changes bring surprise;
Nor is it harsh to make, nor hard to find
A country with-ay, or without mankind;
Yet was 1 born where men are proud to be,
Not without cause; and should I leave behind
The inviolate island of the sage and free,
And seek me out a home by a remoter sea,

Perhaps I loved it well: and should I lay
My ashes in a soil which is not mine,
My spirit shall resume it-if we may
Unbodied choose a sanctuary. Itwine
My hopes of being remembered in my line
With my land's language: if too fond and far
These aspirations in their scope incline-
If my fame should be, as my fortunes are,
Of hasty growth and blight, and dull Oblivion bar.
My name from out the temple where the dead
Are honored by the nations-let it be—

And light the laurels on a loftier head!

And be the Spartan's epitaph on me—

Sparta hath many a worthier son than he.'

Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need;

The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree

I planted-they have torn me-and I bleed:

I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed. He then enumerates all the recollections which are associated with the proud city of Venice. Her old glories, the period when she was the mistress and the ornament of the West, the proud achievements of her warriors, the wealth of her merchant princes, the planters of the Lion, the poetry of her Tasso-all are commemorated. The poet then speaks of those subjects which connect Venice most with England and English hearts-the Shylock and Othello of Shakspeare, the Belvidera of Otway, the 'Mysteries of Udolpho' of Mrs. Radcliffe, and the 'Ghost Seer' of Schiller, which, although not entirely English, has, by means of translations, long been familiar to the people of Eugland.