EDINBURGH REVIEW. "Ah! gentle, fleeting, wav'ring sprite, To what unknown region borne, But pallid, cheerless, and forlorn." 75 "However, be this as it may, we fear his translations and imitations are great favourites with Lord Byron. We have them of all kinds, from Anacreon to Ossian; and viewing them as school exercises, they may pass. Only, why print them after they have had their day and served their turn? And why call the thing p. 79, a translation, where two words (exo xeyev) of the original are expanded into four lines, and the in other thing, in p. 81, where μeσovUxTIOIS TO' ögais is renμεσονυκτίοις ποθ ̓ ὁραις dered by means of six hobbling verses-As to his Ossianic poesy, we are not very good jugdes; being, in truth, so moderately skilled in that species of composition, that we should, in all probability, be criticizing some bit of the genuine Macpherson itself, were we to express our opinion of Lord Byron's rhapsodies. If, then, the following beginning of a Song of Bards,' is by his Lordship, we venture to object to it, as far as 76 EDINBURGH REVIEW. we can comprehend it. 'What form rises on the roar of clouds, whose dark ghost gleams on the red stream of tempests? His voice rolls on the thunder: 'tis Oila the brown Chief of Otihona. He was,' &c. After detaining this 'brown Chief' some time, the bards conclude by giving him their advice to 'raise his fair locks; then to spread them on the arch of the rainbow; and to smile through the tears of the storm.' Of this kind of thing there are no less than nine pages; and we can so far venture an opinion in their favour, that they look very like Macpherson; and we are positive they are pretty nearly as stupid and tiresome. "It is a sort of privilege of poets to be egotists; but they should use it as not abusing it;' and particularly one who piques himself (though indeed at the ripe age of nineteen) of being 'an infant bard'— ('The artless Helicon I boast is youth)—should either not know, or should seem not to know, so much about his own ancestry. Besides a poem, above cited, on the family seat of the Byrons, we have another of eleven pages on the self-same subject, introduced with an apology, he certainly had no inten EDINBURGH REVIEW. 77 tion of inserting it;' but really,' the particular request of some friends,' &c. &c. It concludes with five stanzas on himself, the last and youngest of the noble line.' There is a good deal also about his maternal ancestors, in a poem on Lachion-y-Gair, a mountain where he spent a part of his youth, and might have learnt, that pibroch is not a bagpipe, any more than duet means a fiddle. "As the author has dedicated so large a part of his volume to immortalize his employments at school and college, we cannot possibly dismiss it without presenting the reader with a specimen of these ingenious effusions. In an ode with a Greek motto, called Granta, we have the following magnificent stanzas: "There in apartments small and damp, The candidate for college prizes, Sits poring by the midnight lamp, Goes late to bed, yet early rises: In barbarous Latin doom'd to wrangle. *This alludes to the "Analysis of Greek Metres," by J. B. Seale, D. D. of Christ's College; a standard work on the construction of the 78 EDINBURGH REVIEW. Renouncing every pleasing page From authors of historic use; Preferring to the letter'd sage, The square of the hypothenuse. That hurt none but the hapless student, Which bring together the imprudent.” "We are sorry to hear so bad an account of the College Psalmody, as is contained in the following Attic stanzas: "If David, when his toils were ended, Had heard these blockheads sing before him, To us his psalms had ne'er descended, In furious mood he would have tore 'em." Greek poetry, and which Lord Byron ought to have studied, and made himself master of before he tried his wit upon it. says, EDINBURGH REVIEW. 79 "But, whatever judgment may be passed on the poems of this noble minor, it seems we must take them as we find them, and be content; for they are the last we shall ever have from him. He is at best, he but an intruder into the groves of Parnassus; he never lived in a garret, like thorough-bred poets; and though he once roved a careless mountaineer in the Highlands of Scotland,' he has not of late enjoyed this advantage. Moreover, he expects no profit from his publication; and whether it succeeds or not, it is highly improbable, from his situation and pursuits hereafter,' that he should again condescend to become an author. Therefore, let us take what we get, and be thankful. What right have we poor devils to be nice? We are well off to have got so much from a man of this Lord's station, who does not live in a garret, but has the sway' of Newstead Abbey. Again, we say, let us be thankful; and, with honest Sancho, bid God bless the giver, nor look the gift horse in the mouth." |