In these beautiful lines at the conclusion, we see great similarity to Il Penseroso. "Look on this Maid of Honour, now Truly honoured in her vow She pays to heaven; vain delight By day, or pleasure of the night, She no more thinks of: This fair hair The dainties with which she was fed, The feasts of sensuality. Her jewels, beads; and she must look To teach her the ne'er erring way Of immortality. Oh! may She, as she purposes to be, T. ART. IV. THE "CHILDE HAROLD," AND THE "EXCURSION." BYRON and Wordsworth are perhaps the only poets, for whom their respective admirers claim the highest place amongst the moderns, since Milton. Such rival pretensions demand a strict comparison. They also represent two schools of taste, and moral opinion and feeling, so widely distinct-of such opposite characters and tendencies-that it is highly important to determine which has the better claim to our preference. The two works which have been selected as representatives of their poetical character, are nearly equal in length, and somewhat similar in plan-afford marked specimens of the excellencies and defects of their authors, and supply scope for the manifestation of their distinctive opinions and moods of feeling. There are some curious points both of resemblance and contrast, between the poems; and first, in their heroes: both are uncommon, but most diverse. Byron's is one of highest rank, and lowest character; Wordsworth's, of lowest rank, and highest character: a Peer versus a Pedlar-the Peer versus (forgive a pun, for its sober truthfulness) the Peerless! Next, in their subjects. One is a Tour, and the other an Excursion; but the Tour extends over large tracts of space and time-over countries and years; the Excursion is bounded by a mountain, village, and lake, and closes with the second day. In both poems, the frequent descriptions of external objects, whether of nature or art, are tinged with an infusion of the author's own views and feelings, and that to such a degree, that no two things can present more dissimilar aspects than the same world presents, when viewed through the medium of such souls as Byron and Wordsworth. The aim, apparently, certainly the tendency, of the "Childe Harold," is to represent human life as a scene of ordained and inevitable misery, where even hope only lights the way to certain disappointment. The aim and tendency of the "Excursion" are to recommend the 'cheerful faith,' that all things which we behold are full of blessings; that the good of our mortal state is not less conspicuous than its evil—its lights than its shades. The "Childe Harold” labours to exalt nature above man, by a series of contrasts, as false as they are degrading. The "Excursion" exalts both, but nature in due subserviency to man, whom it recognizes as the lord of creation, not less by superiority of endowment, than by Divine appointment. As the fine passages of the “ Childe Harold" are so familiarly known, we shall comment upon them without extracting them; but, for the opposite reason, shall be under the necessity of making frequent and copious extracts from the "Excursion"—which is not yet so generally known. The opening stanzas of Byron's poem introduce his hero—“ a shameless wight," debauchee, libertine, spendthrift; who, "feeling the fulness of satiety," "drugged with pleasure," merely "for change of scene" 66 from his native land resolves to go, And visit scorching climes beyond the sea." The travels and observations, the sympathies and antipathies, of such a character, constitute the subject of the four cantos; for, although the Harold of the opening stanzas is a caricature rather than a portrait of Byron, yet, like most caricatures, it preserves, amidst all its exaggerations, a striking resemblance ; and, subsequently, throughout the first three cantos, with one or two slight exceptions, the poet is identified with the pilgrim; and in the preface to the fourth, all distinction between the two is formally abandoned. In the eleventh stanza, we have a glimpse of the grossness of Byron's conceptions of woman. They seldom, if ever, seem to have comprehended more than the "large blue eyes, fair locks, and snowy hands." How puerile, too, in the twelfth stanza, the contrast between the hero and his shipmates!-that his stoicism may show to advantage, they are made to blubber like children leaving home, for the first time, for boarding-school : 66 Nor from his lips did come One word of wail, while others sate and wept, And to the reckless gales unmanly moaning kept." Then, again, how marred is the little merit of the "last good night," by the sickening affectation of "wild weeds gathering on a wall," that had been left only the day before; and still more, by the heartlessness of "Sir Childe's" reply to his yeoman :— "Come hither, hither, my staunch yeoman, Why dost thou look so pale ? Or dost thou dread a French foeman ? Or shiver at the gale? "Deem'st thou I tremble for my life? Sir Childe, I am not so weak; After this, the next two lines are in bad taste, "But I who am of lighter mood, Will laugh to flee away.' But what follows is in worse, in the worst taste, "For who would trust the seeming sighs Of wife or paramour ? Fresh feres will dry the bright blue eyes We late saw streaming o'er.'" 66 Pretty consolation to a mourning husband! Fine tribute to an absent wife!" and to the sex generally. We dwell the longer upon these lines, because we have in this ballad the key-note first struck of a strain which pervades this and other works of this author-a strain of disbelief in female virtue-of ostentatious, affected' indifference to his own fortunes-a strain, with rare exceptions, marked throughout by the absence of all sympathy with human nature, which it seems the poet's favourite aim to vilify and degrade. The personification of Battle, "Red Battle," in the thirty-seventh stanza, appears to us a failure in an attempt at, or rather upon the sublime. The description of the Maid of Saragoza, though not in the loftiest style, is full of spirit and vigour. Yet why cannot the poet exalt 'Spain's maids' but at the expense of Albion's? Why cannot he close without a fling at his own countrywomen in those cloven-footed lines? "In softness as in firmness far above Remoter females famed for sick'ning prate; Her mind is nobler sure, her charms perchance as great." The fair objects of this foul attack might find consolation, if they needed any, in its singular impotence; for more disjointed and feeble lines were surely never written. But, to proceed the poet, now writing of Spain, at the foot of Parnassus, happens to look upward to that doubly sublime mount, and ev'n amidst his strain, He turns aside to pay his homage there." This episodical apostrophe is not the less beautiful and attractive, for its being more full of reverence and humility than Byron's effusions generally are; and the very interruption it occasions to the course of the poem, adds to its effect; just as, in a public meeting, the temporary suspension by acclamation of all business, on the unexpected entrance of a public favourite, is the most significant tribute to his importance ;—and then, with what ease he effects a retreat to his former theme! None will be slow to believe that his humble prayer was heard that he received more than he asked-more than " one leaf of Daphne's deathless plant ;" and none, however qualified their estimate of Byron's genius, will believe that such a "votary's hope" was "deemed an idle vaunt." From Seville, the poet's strain bears us to Cadiz ; and who can refuse admiration to the vivid, startling picture, or rather vision, of the Spanish bull-fight; and a willing approbation to the truth with which the moral is pointed in the eightieth stanza? But we regret that we cannot close our sketch of this canto, without having occasion to observe, that lines in the sixty-fifth, sixty-sixth, and eighty-second stanzas justify the censures that have been passed upon the low moral tone of Byron's character, and his insulting estimate of woman, and woman's love. THE SECOND Canto opens with an invocation to Minerva-in our opinion, unworthy of the poet, and still more unworthy of the goddess. The mingled atheism and disbelief of a future state, so openly avowed in stanzas three to seven inclusive, are fearful; but to a Christian mind it is an alleviating perception, that such sentiments benumb the genius which attempts to handle them; for no one, surely, would produce this, and other passages of similar tendency, as poetry of high grade. The anathema, which follows against Lord Elgin, for his removal of the marbles which bear, and, in our opinion, honour his name, is severely unjust; but though denied the praise of truth, it must be allowed that of vigour. The description (stanzas 17 to 20) of a sea-breeze and of the frigate, with its Convoy spread like wild swans on their flight," appears to us more genially written than any in the "Childe Harold," with the exception of the Bull Fight, and that pre-eminent one of the Dying Gladiator. In the present instance, the poetry is as fresh and fair as the breeze it describes. We see no such merit as entitles to special notice in the moonlight meditations at sea, on Solitude, (stanzas 23 to 27). There are, probably, few poets of any pretension who could not have written them. The recipe, in stanza 34, for winning a woman's heart, ("Disguise ev'n tenderness, if thou art wise; Brisk confidence still best with woman copes; Pique her and soothe in turn, soon passion crowns thy hopes,") |