and other eminent men, and its success might have incited him to seek political distinction, but for his far greater success as a poet, which immediately determined his subsequent career. Childe Harold was followed by The Giaour, The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair, Lara, and The Siege of Corinth, in quick succession, and each added to his gigantic reputation. In January, 1815, Lord BYRON was married to a daughter of Sir RALPH MILBANKE. The union, it is well known, was not productive of happiness, and in the following year, after Lady BYRON had given birth to a daughter,* a separation took place. The public, with its customary impertinence, interfered, and it chose to side with the lady. Lord BYRON was libelled, persecuted, and driven from society. No man was ever more grievously wronged. As Mr. MACAULAY well observes, first came the execution, then the investigation, and, last of all, the accusation. There was a quarrel, but there has never been any thing proved, or even alleged, to show that BYRON was more to blame than any other man who is on bad terms with his wife. He again quitted England for the continent, and with a determination never to return. Resuming his pen, he produced in the three succeeding years The Prisoner of Chillon, Manfred, The Lament of Tasso, Beppo, the last cantos of Childe Harold, and many shorter poems, which were received with almost universal applause. He fixed his home in Venice, and there abandoned himself to every kind of pleasure. Under the influence of excesses his health decayed, and his hair turned gray. His mind, too, suffered sensible injury. Don Juan and some of his dramatic pieces contain many passages which only BYRON could have written, but his verse lost the energy for which it had been distinguished and 'h his remarkable command of lar sed away much of that delicate pe puon of the beautiful, which more than any thing else constitutes the poetical faculty. Among BYRON's companions in Italy were SHELLEY and LEIGH HUNT, associated with whom he established a periodical paper called The Liberal; but after the publication of a few numbers, the plan was relinquished. The dead body of his friend SHELLEY he assisted in burning by the bay of Spezia; HUNT, with whom he had quarrelled, returned to England, , ADA BYRON, now Countess of Lovelace. and he directed his own eyes toward Greece, in contemplation of the last and noblest effort of his life. Sated with literary fame, weary of inaction, and thirsting for honourable distinction in a new field, he entered the Grecian camp, where his reception was like that of Lafayette in America, though more enthusiastic, more triumphant. Had he lived, he might have become eminent as a soldier and statesman; but anxiety, action and exposure induced disease, and on the nineteenth of March, 1824, seven months after his arrival in Cephalonia, he died at Missolonghi, in the thirtyseventh year of his age. The admirable criticisms of MACAULAY and other late writers have placed BYRON in a more just position than could have been anticipated from the vague and partisan views that so long obtained respecting him. The world is fast learning to discriminate between his genius and character. The fervour of his poetry no longer blinds men to the fallacy of his moral code, nor is his life judged as formerly with heartless and intolerant severity. He had very many noble qualities; he was alive to tender and generous feelings, and performed numerous acts of disinterested liberality. His amours are the subject of the most melancholy chapter in his life, but they were less numerous and less dishonourable than has been supposed. His liaison with Madame GUICCIOLA, though by the standard of morality established on the shores of the Adriatic it might be called virtuous, was criminal; yet it is not to be visited with the censure which such a connection would deserve in England. In ByRON's early history, his unhappy education, his severe trials, and the capricious treatment he received from society, there is much to explain and to palliate his conduct. He knew the world, and his judgment of it was not very erroneous. He was indeed what almost any man of genius, exposed to such vicissitudes, might be expected to be, unless guided and restrained by religious principle. His writings present a variety of states of mind and conditions of feeling, and critics have pointed out in them what is respectively the offspring of blind passion and genuine sentiment. The descriptive portions of Childe Harold, the versification of the Corsair, and the pure melancholy of some of his occasional effusions, will always be warmly admired by many who can never sympathize with the misanthropic overflowings of a sceptical mind. THE LAMENT OF TASSO.* LONG years!-it tries the thrilling frame to bear And the mind's canker in its savage mood, How Salem's shrine was won, and how adored. Of my own spirit shall be found resource. I have not sunk, for I had no remorse, Nor cause for such: they call'd me mad-and why? I was indeed delirious in my heart To lift my love so lofty as thou art; But still my frenzy was not of the mind; * At Ferrara (in the library) are preserved the original MSS. of Tasso's Gierusalemme and of GUARINI'S Pastor Fido, with letters of TASSO, one from TITIAN to ARIOSTO; and the inkstand and chair, the tomb and the house of the latter. But as misfortune has a greater interest for posterity, and little or none for the contemporary, the cell where TASSO was confined in the hospital of St. ANNA attracts a more fixed attention than the residence or the That thou wert beautiful, and I not blind, But ours is fathomless, and hath no shore. Mid sights and sounds like these my life may close: I have been patient, let me be so yet; I had forgotten half I would forget, But it revives-oh! would it were my lot To be forgetful as I am forgot!— Feel I not wroth with those who bade me dwell Which echoes Madness in her babbling moods ;— None! save that One, the veriest wretch of all, monument of ARIOSTO-at least it had this effect on me. And thus at the collision of thy name |