BEPPO:

A VENETIAN STORY.

Rosalind. Farewell, Monsieur Traveller; Look, you lisp, and wear strange suits: disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with your Nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are or I will scarce think you have swam in a Gondola.

As You Like It, Act. IV., Scene i.

Annotation of the Commentators.

That is, been at Venice, which was much visited by the young English gentlemen of those times, and was then what Paris is now-the seat of all dissoluteness.-S. A.*

["Although I was only nine days at Venice, I saw, in that little time, more liberty to sin than ever I heard tell of in the city of London in nine years.”— ROGER ASCHAM.]

INTRODUCTION TO BEPPO.

GALT had heard, but could not vouch for the truth of the anecdote, that the day Lord Byron received the "Prospectus and Specimen of an intended National Work by William and Robert Whistlecraft," he sat down to spin a web of the same airy texture and finished "Beppo" at a single sitting. Even in the first draught, the poem consisted of eighty-four octave stanzas, which would be at the rate of more than a line a minute for eleven consecutive hours. Though Galt considers the feat not improbable, we believe it impossible, and are confident that if Lord Byron had performed it he would have put the marvel upon record. What is certain in the story is that "Beppo" was suggested by the "Prospectus and Specimen" put forth by Hookham Frere under the name of Whistlecraft, as Whistlecraft's model was the Bernesque of the Italians; so called from Berni, the first distinguished cultivator of the style. "I have written," said Lord Byron at the beginning of October, which was immediately after the completion of the fourth Canto of Childe Harold, "a humorous poem, in the excellent manner of Mr. Whistlecraft, on a Venetian anecdote which amused me. It is called 'Beppo,' the short name for Giuseppe,-that is the Joe of the Italian Joseph. Mr. Whistlecraft has no greater admirer than myself." Whistlecraft, however, attracted little attention, and is now quite forgotten, while "Beppo," when published anonymously in May, 1818, obtained, without the advantage of Lord Byron's name, a signal success. The difference in the poems explains and justifies the difference in their reception. The easy flow of Mr. Frere's "Specimen" showed a great command of idiomatic English, and was not without strokes of satirical wit, but was inferior in both to the " 'Beppo" of Byron. Mr. Frere took for his subject the fabulous days of King Arthur, and, except in occasional allusions, has neglected to animate his obsolete fiction with permanent passions or passing follies. Lord Byron has devoted a hundred stanzas to the telling of a brief and trivial anecdote, which even for the purposes of common conversation has no superfluity of point, but he had the tact to embroider it with numerous sketches of modern manners, which do, in reality, constitute the poem, and please by their liveliness and truth. The contrasted grouping of the characteristics of Italy and England, the criticisms of Laura upon her compeers at the Ball, the effect of the dawn upon the complexion of the dancers, the ludicrous mixture of feminine volatility, inquisitiveness, and loquacity in the crowd of incongruous questions with which the voluble wife greets her long lost husband, are all transcripts from familiar life, and are narrated in a style which combines the music of an elaborate metre with the freedom of colloquial prose. Lord Byron said the piece had "politics and ferocity," but the politics are confined to a few casual allusions, and there is nothing which deserves the name of ferocity, unless it is the ridicule of Sotheby,-appropriately dubbed Botherby,—and of the blue-stockings who

believed in him. Wordsworth strangely alleged that Lord Byron was deficient in feeling, and no less strangely quoted a saying in support of the opinion, to the effect that "Beppo" was his best piece, because there all his faults are brought to a height. Gay feelings have always been permitted to poets as well as grave, lively verse as well as severe, and Wordsworth might as reasonably have maintained that Shakespeare was deficient in tragic passion, and instanced Dogberry to prove it. "Beppo" was valued by Mr. Murray at 500 guineas, which formed part of 2500 guineas demanded by the poet for the fourth Canto of Childe Harold. After striking the bargain he voluntarily threw in the Venetian Tale, "to help the publisher round to his money." His letters show that he attached no particular importance to the poem, and he certainly had not the remotest idea that he had opened a vein from which was to flow what is usually thought the greatest effort of his genius.

ВЕРРО.'

I.

'Tis known, at least it should be, that throughout
All countries of the Catholic persuasion,
Some weeks before Shrove Tuesday comes about,
The people take their fill of recreation,
And buy repentance, ere they grow devout,

However high their rank, or low their station, With fiddling, feasting, dancing, drinking, masquing, And other things which may be had for asking.

II.

The moment night with dusky mantle covers
The skies (and the more duskily the better),
The time less liked by husbands than by lovers
Begins, and prudery flings aside her fetter;
And gaiety on restless tiptoe hovers,

Giggling with all the gallants who beset her;
And there are songs and quavers, roaring, humming,
Guitars, and every other sort of strumming.

III.

And there are dresses splendid, but fantastical, Masks of all times and nations, Turks and Jews, And harlequins and clowns, with feats gymnastical, Greeks, Romans, Yankee-doodles, and Hindoos; All kinds of dress, except the ecclesiastical,

All people, as their fancies hit, may choose, But no one in these parts may quiz the clergy,Therefore take heed, ye Freethinkers! I charge ye.