Moore, upon following his hero to a distant country, alien from his own in manners and in language, were to confine his narrative and illustrative letters to the language of that country, so long as they should be fitted exclusively for the perusal of its inhabitants, his argument, however indefensible in itself, would, at least, have the merit of consistency. But vice is vice in every part of the world, and there is quite as much of it in England as elsewhere; there can be no more harm in describing, in the English language, depravities perpetrated at Newstead or in London, than those which have taken place at Venice. The impression arising from both, or either, upon the public mind, is precisely the same in degree; with this difference, that crime is, like all other objects, softened by distance. Indignation comes to our aid, when we read of atrocities committed near our own doors, polluting our own hearths, and destroying the happiness of our friends and neighbours; but there is nothing, save the presence of virtue itself, to cause a reaction in the mind, upon hearing of iniquities that have taken place in a distant community, with which we have little intercourse. It is impossible that Mr. Moore can have reflected upon the consequences, which may be drawn from his extraordinary argument. May it not be made use of by the Duncombes, the Carliles, and the Stockdales of the day? Does not the impure matter, which he has allowed to go forth in this second volume, strip the publisher of all legal copy-right in the work? We cannot imagine that an injunction would be granted, or maintained, by any Chancellor, against any person who might choose to pirate every word of these two volumes, seeing that there are many letters, in the second volume especially, which would put Mr. Murray at once out of court. We hope the question will not be tried, because we think that the number of copies already published, will be sufficiently mischievous; but if it be tried, we know not how it can be effectually resisted.

Mr. Moore, we really believe, intended to do no more than to present the world with a true portrait of Lord Byron's character; a character which, it may be admitted, is more accurately delineated in his own journals and letters, than it could possibly be by any third person. But it is no justification of scandal, to say that it was promulgated for the sake of truth; truth itself is too expensive an acquisition, when purchased at so great a sacrifice. It would be much better for the living generations and posterity, not to know every feature of Lord Byron's character, than, by attaining that knowledge, to become acquainted with all the seductions of his example. We cannot believe that the Venetian letters have been inserted, after deliberation, in order to give an impetus to the sale of the work; this would be a motive, which we cannot ascribe either to Mr. Moore or Mr. Murray. Indeed, we could not imagine the possibility of its existence, seeing that, independently of these letters (and we much wish that they were

wholly left out), the work contains more interesting details than, perhaps, any other memoir in our language. We can only glance at a few of those, which we find in the volume before us, passing by such as are unfit to meet the eyes of those who usually read this journal.

Mr. Moore's first volume closed with the departure of Lord Byron from England, a departure that took place under circumstances, at once distressing and humiliating. He had, in the course of one short year, gone through every variery of domestic misery; had seen his hearth eight or nine times profaned by the visitations of the law, and been only saved from a prison by the privileges of his rank. He had alienated, as far as they had ever been his, the affections of his wife; and now, rejected by her, and condemned by the world, was betaking himself to an exile, which had not even the dignity of appearing voluntary, as the excommunicating voice of society seemed to leave him no other resource.' It is remarked of him, however, that it was at a period when his domestic prospects were most clouded, he produced the "Siege of Corinth "and" Parisina," thus justifying the criticism of Goethe, that Lord Byron was inspired by the Genius of Pain. It certainly does appear, that all his great efforts were made under circumstances, which would have depressed ordinary minds to a state that would altogether unfit them for the nobler flights of imagination; and there are passages in his writings, which show that he was not unconscious of the power, by which he was thus enabled to rise superior to every attack, that was directed against his personal or literary fortunes. On leaving his native shores for the last time, he proceeded, by Flanders and the Rhine, to Switzerland, a line of road which his biographer justly says, 'he strewed over with all the riches of poesy. While staying in Switzerland, he lived at Diodati, near Geneva, and had frequent opportunities of seeing Madame de Stael at Copet. Here he finished the third canto of "Childe Harold," so full of the beautiful scenery which he had just traversed. Accompanied by Mr. Hobhouse, he visited all that is worth seeing in Switzerland, and although the journal of this little tour, which he communicated to his sister, and which is inserted in the present volume, may be said to be quite an extempore composition, yet it gives a more lively picture of the mountain grandeur of that country, than most of the elaborate descriptions which we have seen. It is written in a half humorous, half poetical style, somewhat after the manner which he subsequently adopted in "Don Juan;" a style of which he appears, from a very early stage of his intellectual progress, to have been a complete master. The higher glacier of the Grindelwald he places at once before us, as a frozen hurricane.' 'Starlight,' he goes on, beautiful, but a devil of a path! Never mind, got safe in: a little lightning, but the whole of the day as fine, in point of weather, as the day on which Paradise was made. Passed whole

woods of withered pines, all withered; trunks stripped and barkless, branchless, lifeless,--done by a single winter. Their appearance reminded me of me and my family. This scene he afterwards made a fine use of in Manfred. Indeed most of the impressions which he received among the Alps, he introduced into that extraordinary poem. A torrent in the Jungfrau, nine hundred feet in height, suggested to him an image as sublime as itself.

'And fling its lines of foaming light along,
And to and fro, like the pale courser's tail,
The giant steed, to be bestrode by Death,
As told in the Apocalypse.'

Standing on the Wengen Alp,' says the journal, we had in view, on one side, the Avalanches, which were falling nearly every five minutes; on the other, the clouds rose from the opposite valley, curling up perpendicular precipices, like the foam of the ocean of hell, during a spring tide-it was white and sulphury, and immeasurably deep in appearance.' How infinitely improved does this scene appear in Manfred, after passing through the alembic of his potent imagination!

'Ye avalanches, whom a breath draws down

In mountains overwhelming, come and crush me!
I hear ye momently above, beneath,

Crash with a frequent conflict.

The mists boil up around the glaciers; clouds

Rise curling fast beneath me, white and sulphury,
Like foam from the roused ocean of deep hell!'

One should have thought that objects which were capable of making such deep impressions upon the mind of Lord Byron, might have excluded from it, for a while, the recollection of his recent miseries--miseries indeed, which, it was at the time pretty generally believed, he had already laughed at and forgotten. We find, however, from the conclusion of his journal of this little tour among the Alps, that he felt his desolate situation most intensely.

"In the weather for this tour (of thirteen days,) I have been very fortunate-fortunate in a companion (Mr. H.)-fortunate in our prospects, and exempt from even the little petty accidents and delays which often render journies in a less wild country disappointing. I was disposed to be pleased. I am a lover of nature, and an admirer of beauty. I can bear fatigue, and welcome privation, and have seen some of the noblest views in the world. But in all this-the recollection of bitterness, and more especially of recent and more home desolation, which must accompany me through life, have preyed upon me here; and neither the music of the shepherd, the crashing of the avalanche, nor the torrent, the mountain, the glacier, the forest, nor the cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight upon my heart, nor enabled me to lose my own wretched identity in the majesty, and the power, and the glory, around, above, and beneath me."-vol. ii. p. 22.

On his arrival at Geneva, Lord Byron, for the first time, became acquainted with Mr. Shelley-a circumstance which affords to his biographer, an opportunity for drawing an interesting and accurate comparison between the peculiar tendencies of the two poets, which, on many points, were as opposite as the poles. This difference, however, seemed to link them in a more intimate friendship, thus realizing the theory of St. Pierre, (of the truth of which there are many examples daily to be witnessed) that the ties of friendship, and even of love, if not originally formed, are generally made stronger by contrast of genius and disposition between the parties. Polidori-that vain literary empiric, who, under the title of physician, now constantly attended Lord Byron-the two poets, and Mrs. Shelley, were much together at this period. During a whole week of rain, they amused themselves with reading German ghost stories, and with inventing some of their own. It is to such exercises, we are told, that we are indebted to Polidori for that horrid story of the Vampire, which, upon its first appearance, was attributed to Lord Byron, and attracted for the first time, it is asserted, attention to his writings amongst our Gallic neighbours. The noble poet wrote, indeed, something of the kind less extravagant than Polidori's tale, which has long since been forgotten. Mrs. Shelley's German muse was more successful, in the production of Frankenstein, which leaves behind it an impression never to be forgotten. Shelley, though in other respects so different from Lord Byron, shared with him in all his fondness for boating. They made a tour round the Lake together, and with the "Heloise" before them, (which by the way Shelley then read for the first time), visited the well-known scenes round Meillerie and Clarens-scenes to which the genius of Rousseau has added so many ideal charms.

During one of Lord Byron's visits to Copet, Madame de Stael, in her own frank and privileged style, gave him a lecture upon his matrimonial conduct, which had the effect of inducing him to enter upon a negociation, with the view of being reconciled to his lady. From reasons which are not explained, it wholly failed at the very commencement. This failure it was, Mr. Moore believes, which, after the violence he had done his own pride in the first overture, first infused any mixture of resentment or bitterness into the feelings hitherto entertained by him, throughout these painful differences. He had, indeed, since his arrival in Geneva, invariably spoken of his lady with kindness and regret, imputing the course she had taken, in leaving him, not to herself, but others, and assigning whatever little share of blame he would allow her to bear in the transaction, to the simple, and doubtless true cause-her not at all understanding him. "I have no doubt," he would sometimes say, "that she really did believe me to be mad." He had resolved, though his pecuniary means were at this time so limited, that he could not afford to keep a carriage, never to touch a farthing of his wife's fortune; a resolution, however, which he had not the fortitude to keep.

Besides the Third Canto of Childe Harold, he now produced the Prisoner of Chillon, and his two poems "Darkness" and the "Dream," the latter of which,' says Mr. Moore, 'cost him many a tear in writing, being indeed, the most mournful, as well as picturesque "story of a wandering life," that ever came from the pen and heart of man.' Besides the Vampire fragment, he commenced another romance in prose, founded upon that of the Marriage of Belphegor, with the view of relating his own matrimonial misfortunes. This, however, he put into the fire, upon hearing from England that Lady Byron was ill. Mr. Moore gives two other poems, which were written at this period, and had not hitherto been published. The longer of these, addressed by Lord Byron to his sister, breathes the purest and most fervent fraternal affection, though written in an unpolished style. In the other, he seems to have shadowed out those unhappy notions concerning death, which afterwards became a fixed doctrine in his mind.

"What is this Death ?—a quiet of the heart?
The whole of that of which we are a part?
For Life is but a vision—what I see
Of all which lives alone is life to me,
And being so the absent are the dead,
Who haunt us from tranquillity and spread
A dreary shroud around us, and invest
With sad remembrancers our hours of rest.

"The absent are the dead-for they are cold,
And ne'er can be what once we did behold;
And they are changed, and cheerless,—or if yet
The unforgotten do not all forget,
Since thus divided-equal must it be
If the deep barrier be of earth, or sea;
It may be both-but one day end it must
In the dark union of insensate dust.

"The under-earth inhabitants-are they
But mingled millions decomposed to clay?
The ashes of a thousand ages spread
Wherever man has trodden or shall tread?
Or do they in their silent cities dwell

Each in his incommunicative cell?

Or have they their own language? and a sense

Of breathless being ?-darken'd and intense

As midnight in her solitude?--Oh earth!

Where are the past ?-and wherefore had they birth?

The dead are thy inheritors-and we

But bubbles on thy surface; and the key

Of thy profundity is in the grave,
The ebon portal of thy peopled cave,
Where I would walk in spirit, and behold
Our elements resolved to things untold,
And fathom hidden wonders, and explore

The essence of great bosoms now no more."-vol. ii. p. 37.