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4

INTRODUCTION TO LARA.

IN the Dedication to "The Corsair" (Jan. 2, 1814), Lord Byron announced that he should publish nothing further for several years. For a time the resolution increased in strength, and in the April following he came to the most extraordinary decision that ever entered the mind of a successful author, which was not only to write no more in future, but to recall every line he had already penned. He sent Mr. Murray a draft for the sum which had been paid for the copyrights, and an appeal to his good nature from the publisher, alone prevented the execution of the scheme. While Europe rang with his fame, the hisses of envy, hatred, and malice made themselves heard amid the loud applause. His friends, who acknowledged that no one wrote so well, feared he would write too much; and he himself doubted the solid worth of what he wrote so fast. Under the united influence of these impressions he resolved to lay by, and meant perhaps, in the interval, to gather himself up for a mighty spring, when the appetite of the public was increased by abstinence. But he might have determined not to breathe with an equal chance of keeping his vow. Before the end of May "Lara" was begun, and was carried on chiefly while the author undressed after balls and masquerades. It was published, anonymously, in August, in the same volume with the "Jacqueline" of Rogers, a conjunction too unnatural to last beyond the hour. An acquaintance of Lord Byron, who was reading the book in the Brighton coach, was asked by a passenger the name of the author, and on replying that they were two, "Ay, Ay," rejoined the querist,-"a joint concern, I suppose,-summot like Sternhold and Hopkins." The "vile comparison" delighted Lord Byron, always pleased with any ludicrous absurdity which struck at literary fame. It is evident that the tale is she sequel of "The Corsair "-that Lara is Conrad; Kaled, Gulnare, and that Medora was snatched from Sir Ezzelin and fled with her lover to the Pirate's Island. A few months after the appearance of the poem Lord Byron pronounced that it was "his most unpopular effervescence, being too little narrative, and too metaphysical to please the majority of readers." The continuation is certainly tame in comparison with "The Corsair." The character of Lara-in which Lord Byron drew again from his personal history is rather tediously minute; and, with much fine verse, there is not the former living language, and hurrying action, to bear us onward with breathless haste. George Ellis objected that the mysterious vision, which appears to Lara in his antique hall, was an excrescence on the poem, and it is now obvious that the connection was not with the story, but with the author's recollections of his own old haunted Gothic Abbey. The skull, too, placed beside Lara's book was part of the cherished furniture of Newstead; and, at one period of Lord Byron's history, the woman, disguised like a page, was also there, to complete the picture. The conclusion of the second canto, commencing from the sixteenth section, is full of spirit and pathos, and many of the elegant and elaborate descriptions only disappoint from the inevitable contrast with the more brilliant "Corsair." Lord Byron fancied he had varied the couplet of "Lara" from that of its predecessor, but, except that the latter is more antithetical, we have not been able to detect the difference. Seven hundred pounds was the price of the copyright.

LARA.

CANTO THE FIRST.

I.

THE Serfs' are glad through Lara's wide domain,
And Slavery half forgets her feudal chain;
He, their unhoped, but unforgotten lord,
The long self-exiled chieftain, is restored:
There be bright faces in the busy hall,

Bowls on the board, and banners on the wall;
Far checkering o'er the pictured window, plays
The unwonted faggot's hospitable blaze;

And gay retainers gather round the hearth,
With tongues all loudness, and with eyes all mirth.

II.

The chief of Lara is return'd again:

And why had Lara cross'd the bounding main?
Left by his sire, too young such loss to know,
Lord of himself,-that heritage of woe,
That fearful empire which the human breast

But holds to rob the heart within of rest!

1 The reader is apprised, that the name of Lara being Spanish, and no circumstance of local and natural description fixing the scene or hero of the poem to any country or age, the word "Serf," which could not be correctly applied to the lower classes in Spain, who were never vassals of the soil, has nevertheless been employed to designate the followers of our fictitious chieftain.-[Lord Byron elsewhere intimates, that he meant Lara for a chief of the Morea.]

VOL. III.

With none to check, and few to point in time
The thousand paths that slope the way to crime;
Then, when he most required commandment, then
Had Lara's daring boyhood govern❜d men.
It skills not, boots not step by step to trace
His youth through all the mazes of its race;
Short was the course his restlessness had run,
But long enough to leave him half undone.

III.

And Lara left in youth his father-land;
But from the hour he waved his parting hand
Each trace wax'd fainter of his course, till all
Had nearly ceased his memory to recall.
His sire was dust, his vassals could declare,
"Twas all they knew, that Lara was not there;
Nor sent, nor came he, till conjecture grew
Cold in the many, anxious in the few.
His hall scarce echoes with his wonted name,
His portrait darkens in its fading frame,
Another chief consoled his destined bride,
The young forgot him, and the old had died;
"Yet doth he live!" exclaims the impatient heir,
And sighs for sables which he must not wear.
A hundred scutcheons deck with gloomy grace
The Laras' last and longest dwelling-place;
But one is absent from the mouldering file,
That now were welcome in that Gothic pile.

IV.

He comes at last in sudden loneliness,

And whence they know not, why they need not guess ; They more might marvel, when the greeting's o'er

Not that he came, but came not long before:

No train is his beyond a single page,

Of foreign aspect, and of tender age.
Years had roll'd on, and fast they speed away
To those that wander as to those that stay;
But lack of tidings from another clime
Had lent a flagging wing to weary Time.