D

THE

AMERICAN MONTHLY MAGAZINE

AND

CRITICAL REVIEW,

FOR MAY, 1817.

NO. I.....VOL. I.

ART. I. Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto III,-Prisoners of Chillon, and other Poems, by Lord Byron.

oscillation of public opinion in his favour should have prepared him for its vicissitude. As so much of his excellence was taken upon trust, his fame was closely connected with his veracity; and he should not be astonished to find his reputation declining with the developement of his character. Violent emotions are apt to be succeeded by their opposites. Contempt naturally follows disabused esteem; and mistaken sympathy may easily be converted into detestation. His lordship's boastful blazon of the depravity of his heart, casts no little imputation on the strength of his understanding; whilst his wanton exhibition of his deformity, has not left good-nature even a fig-leaf with which to cover his shame.

IT has been so fashionable of late, to
admire Lord Byron's poetry, that no
man who valued his pretensions to ton,
dared to speak irreverently of any thing
that bore the sanction of his name. His
lordship's writings, indeed, pretty plain-
ly intimate his own sense of the sublimi-
ty of his genius; and what can be more
conclusive? What better authority could
we possibly have than his lordship's
judgment in the case? or who could be
so conusant to his lordship's merits
as himself? But be this as it may, it
was, at any rate, very generally agreed
to believe what his lordship so serious-
ly persisted in asserting; and if he ob-
tained credit in any proportion to the ex-
tent of his claims, bis celebrity is not won-
derful. His title to panegyric being thus
established, the only strife seemed to
be, who should be most vociferous in
his praise. If a snarling critic were
surly enough to question a decree pro-
nounced by acclamation, he could
scarcely hope to be heard in the tumult
of applause.
But fanaticism, which is generally has chosen so intimately to blend his
founded in delusion, is ever transient; poetic with his moral character, and to
and the fickleness of fashion is prover- obtrude himself, in both, so often, and
bial. His lordship's experience of the with so little modesty, on th

Yet, but for his folly, he might still have basked in the sunshine of favour. He had long enjoyed a plenary indulgence for sins against the canons of taste, and might have continued to transgress them with impunity, had he contravened no other laws. But, as he

85341

This early and signal discomfiture of

is not surprising that the lash of correction deservedly applied to the one, the Goliaths of literature, though achievshould, sometimes, inflict an unmerited ed by a stripling, with little more than stripe on the other. It is not, however, a pebble, was enough to deter less probably, the first instance in which his doughty champions from hazarding a lordship has suffered from an impru- conflict. Nor was the effect of this dent connexion. exploit merely to avert the danger of We have said that his lordship had attack. Whilst the few who had felt long enjoyed an exemption from the his force, or feared his vigour, were Scourge of criticism; but it was not al- awed at least into respectful silence, the ways so; nor was the lenity of the many who rejoiced in the defeat of the critics owing to the humility with vanquished, conspired to extol the which he, at any time, kissed the rod. prowess of the victor:-and, unfortuThe Edinburgh Reviewers frowned nately, his lordship was weak enough to terribly at the peccadillos of his lord- measure his desert by the scale of their ship's lisping muse. The venial pue- gratitude. rilities of some juvenile performances, The noble author did not repose long which that eagerness for notoriety that upon his laurels. He soon made a bold has been the bane of his life, impelled experiment upon the strength of his rehim to print, drew down upon him, putation; which unhappily bore him out from those obdurate censors, a de- in it. He was able, and his very temerity nunciation that might have daunted a and extravagance were accessary to his veteran. So far, however, from inspir- success, to bring into vogue a new style ing his lordship with diffidence in his of poetry, compared with which every powers, or operating to dissuade him thing that had preceded it was tame from his favourite pursuits, this severity He placed himself at the head of a of reprehension, whilst it inflamed his new school; and the Stagirite never ire, suggested a means of appeasing his had more disciples. The votaries of wrath. His retort in the satire of the the system, of which Lord Byron was English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' the propagator, have ravaged every reafforded him, at once, the gratification gion of fancy, and have erected the of revenge and the eclat of triumph, bigh places of their monstrous idolatry Its influence was not confined to pro- in groves sacred to the muses. ducing a change in public sentiment; Is there a parson much bemused in beer, but strange as it may seem, it wrought A maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer,

A clerk foredoom'd his father's soul to cross,

a prodigious revolution in the minds of Who pens a stanza when he should engross? his adversaries. However it may be Is there who lock'd from ink and paper scrawls, accounted for, certain it is, that they Withdesperate charcoal,round hisdarken'd walls. suddenly relaxed the austerity of their features, and have, ever since, continued to smile on his lordship with the most condescending complacency.

All, all are imitators of Byron. But one may mimic the contortions of the Sybil,' without catching her inspiration.' Such is the fate of most of the herd

On the whole, his lordship's productions leave an impression on the mind, (which we cannot but suspect that they were designed to create,) that the author is capable of more than he has performed. It would seem as if one who could do so well, might do better.-We sincerely hope he may.

of Byron's followers. In his lordship's lordship seems to think it is as much wildest incoherence, there is something beneath him to attend to the melody of of poetic frenzy; and there are inter- his numbers, as it would be below a vals in his raving:-even his absurdi- great general to step to the air of a ties are rarely ridiculous, and there march. He sacrifices on all occasions, is sometimes, method in his mad- without hesitation, both rhyme and ness.' rythm to piquancy of phrase. He is But his lordship has entirely lost sight teazing us constantly, too, with hints of the true end of poetry. He has and innuendos at ideas which he cannot stripped her of her dignity. He has define, simply because he does not comdivorced her from reason, and prosti- prehend them. Mystery is a source of tuted her to passion. It used to be the sublime, but not a convertible term considered the province of poetry to for sublimity. inculcate useful truths by pleasing fictions; to instil moral lessons by impressive illustrations; to assign, with 'poetic justice,' to virtue its reward, and to vice its punishment; to excite horror at crime, and sympathy for suffering; in short, to refine the manners, to raise the genius, and to mend the heart.' Not one of these objects has his lordship ever His lordship is not destitute of amproposed to himself. He has selected bition; but it is not of the right sort. traitors, seducers, pirates, robbers, mur- He has an inordinate appetite for popuderers, and atheists, as the heroes of larity; but is satisfied with the coarsest his plots, and has held them up, if not kind of it. As long as he can procure to the approbation, at least to the com- his daily bread of praise, in return for miseration of his readers. He has, by his fragments of epic and fritters of an incongruous assemblage of inconsist- song, we have no hope of his addicting ent qualities in the creatures of his himself to more worthy exertions. The imagination, and by throwing into his only chance is, that his readers will pictures an artful and deceptive mix- at last be surfeited with his trash. ture of light and shade, endeavoured As they become fastidious, he will proto dazzle our sight and mislead our bably mend; but whilst he can get even judgment. He has laboured to enlist crumbs of encomium in exchange for our best feelings on the worst side, and to the crudities with which he crowds the entice us to applaud the expression of market, there is no prospect of insentiments which it would be impious provement in the manufacture of his materials. His 'Third Canto of Childe But laying aside the moral of his fa- Harold,' with its giblets and garnishes, bles, we have objections of no trivial forcibly reminded us of Peter Pindar's nature to his lordship's manner. His exclamation,

to entertain.

Some folks are fond of hearing themselves chat

ter,

Promising wine, and giving milk and water,

Or that most mawkish mess call'd water-gruel,
This is not fair, my
lord-'tis cruel.
very

It came

His friends, indeed, have said that the noble author appropriates no portion of these sums to his own use. We know not how the fact may be→

Another motive than vanity might, though we should never have thought indeed, be suggested for the inconti- of reproaching any man with receiving nence of his lordship's muse. the reward of his labours, had he not out in evidence, in a recent trial before himself endeavoured to render it opthe Lord Chancellor, on an application probrious. The world, we imagine, for an injunction to restrain the sale of would much more easily forgive his certain poems, to which the publisher lordship for subsisting on the products had taken the liberty to prefix his lord- of his literary toil, than for squandership's name to give them currency, that ing the inheritance of his family. The his lordship had received 2000l. from humiliation of vending his verses is his Bookseller, Mr. MURRAY, for the but the consequence of the dilapidation copy-right of the little volume before of his patrimony, and no disgrace in us, and 50007. at different times, on ac- comparison with the alienation of the count of works purchased by him of the venerable monuments of the feudal noble author. This huckstering does grandeur of his house. not exactly correspond with the lofty strain of his indignant apostrophe to

But we shall gaze, in vain, on the galaxy of his lordship's virtues, for any glimmering of consistency. His character is a compound of contrarietiesand his course has been as chequered as his character. It is amusing to trace his meanderings. To-day, he offers some fruit of his fecundity as a tribute of gratitude and a testimony of regard to a noble relative;*-to-morrow, disavows the acknowledgment; and the third day, recants his revocation. Sometimes the process is reversed, and he begins with reviling and ends with a dedication. In one breath, he stigmatizes a man as a dunce, or an ass,§ and

+

the Earl of Carlisle, his guardian; ridiculed him His lordship dedicated his juvenile poems to in his Satires; and confesses, in his third canto of Childe Harold, that he wronged him.

† Lord Holland and Thomas Moore were dealt with after this manner.

Mr. Jeffrey, the leading editor of the Edinburgh Review, to abuse whom, he wrote his Satire, and to gratify whom, he afterwards bought up the whole edition, and suppressed it.

Mr. Coleridge: this sentimental ballad