are worth little in the schools, it does not follow that their effect is inconsiderable in the world. On the contrary, it is the mischief of all poetical paradoxes, that, from the very limits and end of poetry, which deals only in obvious and glancing views, they are never brought to the fair test of argument. An al-ity which he has experienced from the wri lusion to a doubtful topic will often pass for a uefinitive conclusion on it; and, when clothed in beautiful language, may leave the most pernicious impressions behind. In the courts of morality, poets are unexceptionable witnesses; they may give in the evidence, and depose to facts whether good or ill; but we demur to their arbitrary and self-pleasing Sunmings up. They are suspected judges, and not very often safe advocates; where great questions are concerned, and universal principles brought to issue. But we shall not press this point farther at present.

even of Don Juan, so offensively degrading as Tom Jones' affair with Lady Bellaston. It is no doubt a wretched apology for the indecencies of a man of genius, that equal indecencies have been forgiven to his predeces sors: But the precedent of lenity might have been followed; and we might have passed both the levity and the voluptuousness-the dangerous warmth of his romantic situations, and the scandal of his cold-blooded dissipa tion. It might not have been so easy to ge. over his dogmatic scepticism-his hard-heartand eager expositions of the non-existence of virtue and honour. Even this, however, might have been comparatively harmless, if it had not been accompanied by that which may look, at first sight, as a palliation-the frequent presentment of the most touching pictures of tenderness, generosity, and faith.

sure they will pass with no other person.They are so manifestly inconsistent, as mutually to destroy each other-and so weak, as to be quite insufficient to account for the fact, even if they could be effectually combined for that purpose. The party that Lord Byron has chiefly offended, bears no malice to Lords and Gentlemen. Against its rancour, on the contrary, these qualities have undoubtedly been his best protection; and had it not been for them, he may be assured that he would, long ere now, have been shown up in the pages of the Quarterly, with the same candoured maxims of misanthropy-his cold-blooded and liberality that has there been exercised towards his friend Lady Morgan. That the base and the bigoted-those whom he has darkened by his glory, spited by his talent, or mortified by his neglect-have taken advantage of the prevailing disaffection, to vent their puny malice in silly nicknames and vulgar scurrility, is natural and true. But Lord The charge we bring against Lord Byron, Byron may depend upon it, that the dissatis- in short, is, that his writings have a tendency faction is not confined to them-and, indeed, to destroy all belief in the reality of virtue that they would never have had the courage and to make all enthusiasm and conto assail one so immeasurably their superior, if he had not at once made himself vulnerable by his errors, and alienated his natural defenders by his obstinate adherence to them. We are not bigots or rival poets. We have not been detractors from Lord Byron's fame, nor the friends of his detractors; and we tell him-far more in sorrow than in anger-that we verily believe the great body of the English nation-the religious, the moral, and the candid part of it-consider the tendency of his writings to be immoral and perniciousand look upon his perseverance in that strain of composition with regret and reprehension. He has no priestlike cant or priestlike reviling to apprehend from us. We do not charge him with being either a disciple or an apostle of Satan; nor do we describe his poetry as a mere compound of blasphemy and obscenity. On the contrary, we are inclined to believe that he wishes well to the happiness of mankind-and are glad to testify, that his poems abound with sentiments of great dignity and tenderness, as well as passages of infinite sublimity and beauty. But their general tendency we believe to be in the highest degree pernicious; and we even think that it is chiefly by means of the fine and lofty sentiments they contain, that they acquire their most fatal power of corruption. This may sound at first, perhaps, like a paradox; but we are mistaken if we shall not make it intelligible enough in the end.

We think there are indecencies and indelicacies, seductive descriptions and profligate representations, which are extremely reprehensible; and also audacious speculations, and erroneous and uncharitable assertions, equally indefensible. But if these had stood alone, and if the whole body of his works had been made up of gaudy ribaldry and flashy scepticism, the mischief, we think, would have been much less than it is. He is not more obscene, perhaps, than Dryden or Prior, and other classical and pardoned writers or is there any passage in the history

stancy of affection ridiculous; and this, not so much by direct maxims and examples, of an imposing or seducing kind, as by the constant exhibition of the most profligate heartlessness in the persons who had been transiently represented as actuated by the purest and most exalted emotions—and in the lessons of that very teacher who had been, but a moment before, so beautifully pathetic in the expression of the loftiest conceptions. When a gay voluptuary descants, somewhat too freely, on the intoxications of love and wine, we ascribe his excesses to the effervescence of youthful spirits, and do not consider him as seriously impeaching either the value or the reality of the severer virtues; and in the same way, when the satirist deals out his sarcasms against the sincerity of human professions, and unmasks the secret infirmities of our bosoms, we consider this as aimed at hypocrisy, and not at mankind: or, at all events, and in either case, we consider the Sensualist and the Misanthrope as wandering, each in his own delusion-and are contented to pity those who have never known the charms of a tender or generous affection.The true antidote to such seductive or revolt. ing views of human nature, is to turn to the scenes of its nobleness and attraction; and to reconcile ourselves again to our kind, by list ening to the accents of pure affection and incorruptible honour. But if those accents have flowed in all their sweetness, from the very lips that instantly open again to mock and blaspheme them, the antidote is mingled with the poison, and the draught is the more deadly for the mixture!

The reveller may pursue his orgies, and the wanton display her enchantments, with comparative safety to those around them, as long as they know or believe that there are purer and higher enjoyments, and teachers and followers of a happier way. But if the Priest pass from the altar, with persuasive exhortations to peace and purity still trembling on his tongue, to join familiarly in the grossest and most pro

ne debauchery-if the Matron, who has charmed all hearts by the lovely sanctimonies of her conjugal and maternal endearments, glides out from the circle of her children, and gives bold and shameless way to the most abandoned and degrading vicesour notions of right and wrong are at once confounded-our confidence in virtue shaken to the foundation-and our reliance on truth | and fidelity at an end for ever.

compassion were fit only to be laughed at. In the same spirit, the glorious Ode on the aspirations of Greece after Liberty, is instantly followed up by a strain of dull and coldblooded ribaldry;-and we are hurried on from the distraction and death of Haidce to merry scenes of intrigue and masquerading in the seraglio. Thus all good feelings are excited only to accustom us to their speedy and complete extinction; and we are brought back, from their transient and theatrical exhibition, to the staple and substantial doctrine of the work-the non-existence of constancy in women or honour in men, and the folly of expecting to meet with any such virtues, or of cultivating them, for an undeserving world; and all this mixed up with so much wit and cleverness, and knowledge of human nature, as to make it irresistibly pleasant and plausible-while there is not only no antidote supplied, but every thing that might have operated in that way has been anticipated, and presented already in as strong and engaging a form as possible-but under such associations as to rob it of all efficacy, or even turn it into an auxiliary of the poison.

This is the charge which we bring against Lord Byron. We say that, under some strange misapprehension as to the truth, and the duty of proclaiming it, he has exerted all the powers of his powerful mind to convince his readers, both directly and indirectly, that all ennobling pursuits, and disinterested virtues, are mere deceits or illusions-hollow and despicable mockeries for the most part, and, at best, but laborious follies. Religion, love, patriotism, valour, devotion, constancy, ambition-all are to be laughed at, disbelieved in, and despised!-and nothing is really good, so far as we can gather, but a succession of dangers to stir the blood, and of banquets and intrigues to soothe it again! If this doctrine stood alone, with its examples, it would revolt, we believe This is our sincere opinion of much of Lord more than it would seduce:-But the author Byron's most splendid poetry-a little exagge of it has the unlucky gift of personating all rated perhaps in the expression, from a desire those sweet and lofty illusions, and that with to make our exposition clear and impressive such grace and force, and truth to nature, that but, in substance, we think merited and it is impossible not to suppose, for the time, that he is among the most devoted of their votariestill he casts off the character with a jerk-and, the moment after he has moved and exalted us to the very height of our conception, resumes his mockery at all things serious or sublime and lets us down at once on some coarse joke, hard-hearted sarcasm, or fierce and relentless personality-as if on purpose to show

correct. We have already said, and we deliberately repeat, that we have no notion that Lord Byron had any mischievous intention in these publications-and readily acquit him of any wish to corrupt the morals or impair the happiness of his readers. Such a wish, indeed, is in itself altogether inconceivable; but it is our duty, nevertheless, to say, that much of what he has published appears to us to have this tendency and that we are acquainted with no writings so well calculated to extinguish in young minds all generous enthusiasm and gentle affection-all respect for themselves, and all love for their kind-to make them practise and profess hardily what it teaches them to suspect in others-and actually to persuade them that it is wise and manly and knowing to laugh, not only at selfdenial and restraint, but at all aspiring ambition, and all warm and constant affection.

"Whoe'er was edified, himself was not or to demonstrate practically as it were, and by example, how possible it is to have all fine and noble feelings, or their appearance, for a moment, and yet retain no particle of respect for them-or of belief in their intrinsic worth or permanent reality. Thus, we have an indelicate but very clever scene of young Juan's concealment in the bed of an amorous matron, and of the torrent of "rattling and audacious eloquence" with which she repels the too How opposite to this is the system, or the just suspicions of her jealous lord. All this temper, of the great author of Waverley-the is merely comic, and a little coarse:-But only living individual to whom Lord Byron then the poet chooses to make this shameless must submit to be ranked as inferior in genius and abandoned woman address to her young and still more deplorably inferior in all that gallant an epistle breathing the very spirit of makes genius either amiable in itself, or warm, devoted, pure, and unalterable love-useful to society! With all his unrivalled thus profaning the holiest language of the heart, and indirectly associating it with the most hateful and degrading sensuality. In like manner, the sublime and terrific description of the Shipwreck is strangely and disgustingly broken by traits of low humour and buffoonery; and we pass immediately from the moans of an agonising father fainting over his famished son, to facetious stories of Juan's begging a paw of his father's dog-and refusing a slice of his tutor!-as if it were a fine hing to be hard-hearted-and pity and

power of invention and judgment, of pathos and pleasantry, the tenor of his sentiments is uniformly generous, indulgent, and goodhumoured; and so remote from the bitterness of misanthropy, that he never indulges in sarcasm, and scarcely, in any case, carries his merriment so far as derision. But the peculiarity by which he stands most broadly and proudly distinguished from Lord Byron is, that, beginning as he frequently does, with some ludicrous or satirical theme, he never fails to raise out of it some feelings of a gener

ous of gentle kind, and to end by exciting our tender pity, or deep respect, for those very individuals or classes of persons who seemed at first to be brought on the stage for our mere sport and amusement-thus making the ludicrous itself subservient to the cause of benevolence and inculcating, at every turn, and as the true end and result of all his trials and experiments, the love of our kind, and the duty and delight or sordial and genuine sympathy with the joys and sorrows of every condition of men. It seems to be Lord Byron's way, on the contrary, never to excite a kind or a noble sentiment, without making haste to obliterate it by a torrent of unfeeling mockery or relentless abuse, and taking pains to show how well those passing fantasies may be reconciled to a system of resolute misanthropy,

w

or so managed as even to enhance its ineri: or confirm its truth. With what different sensations, accordingly, do we read the works of those two great writers!-With the one, we seem to share a gay and gorgeous banquetwith the other, a wild and dangerous intoxi. cation. Let Lord Byron bethink him of this contrast-and its causes and effects. Though he scorns the precepts, and defies the censure of ordinary men, he may yet be moved by the example of his only superior!-In the mean time, we have endeavoured to point out the canker that stains the splendid flowers of his poetry-or, rather, the serpent that lurks be neath them. If it will not listen to the voice of the charmer, that brilliant garden, gay and glorious as it is, must be deserted, and its existence deplored, as a snare to the unwary.

(August, 1817.)

Manfred; a Dramatic Poem. By Lord BYRON. 8vo. pp. 75. London: 1811.

ings,-but he treats them with gentleness and pity; and, except when stung to impatienco by too importunate an intrusion, is kind and considerate of the comforts of all around him.

THIS is a very strange-not a very pleasing -but unquestionably a very powerful and most poetical production. The noble author, we find, still deals with that dark and overawing Spirit, by whose aid he has so often This piece is properly entitled a Dramatic subdued the minds of his readers, and in Poem-for it is merely poetical, and is not at whose might he has wrought so many won- all a drama or play in the modern acceptation ders. In Manfred, we recognise at once the of the term. It has no action; no plot-and gloom and potency of that soul which burned no characters; Manfred merely muses and and blasted and fed upon itself in Harold, and suffers from the beginning to the end. His Conrad, and Lara-and which comes again in distresses are the same at the opening of the this piece, more in sorrow than in anger- scene and at its closing-and the temper in more proud, perhaps, and more awful than which they are borne is the same. A hunter ever-but with the fiercer traits of its misan- and a priest, and some domestics, are indeed thropy subdued, as it were, and quenched in introduced; but they have no connection with the gloom of a deeper despondency. Man- the passions or sufferings on which the interfred does not, like Conrad and Lara, wreakest depends; and Manfred is substantially the anguish of his burning heart in the dan-alone throughout the whole piece. He holds gers and daring of desperate and predatory no communion but with the memory of the war-nor seek to drown bitter thoughts in the Being he had loved and the immortal Spirits tumult of perpetual contention-nor yet, like whom he evokes to eproach with his misery, Harold, does he sweep over the peopled scenes and their inability to relieve it. These unof the earth with high disdain and aversion, earthly beings approach nearer to the charac and make his survey of the business and ter of persons of the drama-but still they pleasures and studies of man an occasion for are but choral accompaniments to the per taunts and sarcasms, and the food of an im-formance; and Manfred is, in reality, the only measurable spleen. He is fixed by the genius actor and sufferer on the scene. To delineate of the poet in the majestic solitudes of the his character indeed-to render conceivable central Alps-where, from his youth up, he his feelings-is plainly the whole scope and has lived in proud but calm seclusion from design of the poem; and the conception and the ways of men; conversing only with the execution are, in this respect, equally admir magnificent forms and aspects of nature by able. It is a grand and terrific vision of a which he is surrounded, and with the Spirits being invested with superhuman attributes, of the Elements over whom he has acquired in order that he may be capable of more than dominion, by the secret and unhallowed stu- human sufferings, and be sustained under dies of Sorcery and Magic. He is averse them by more than human force and pride. indeed from mankind, and scorns the low and To object to the improbability of the fiction frivolous nature to which he belongs; but he is, we think, to mistake the end and aim of cherishes no animosity or hostility to that the author. Probabilities, we apprehend, did feeble race. Their concerns excite no inter- not enter at all into his consideration-his est-their pursuits no sympathy-their joys object was, to produce effect-to exalt and no envy. It is irksome and vexatious for him dilate the character through whom he was to to be crossed by them in his melancholy mus-interest or appal us—and to raise our concep

tion of it, by all the helps that could be derived from the majesty of nature, or the dread of iperstition. It is enough, therefore, if the situation in which he has placed him is conceivable-and if the supposition of its reality enhances our emotions and kindles our imagination; for it is Manfred only that we are required to fear, to pity, or admire. If we can once conceive of him as a real existence, and enter into the depth and the height of his pride and his sorrows, we may deal as we please with the means that have been used to furnish as with this impression, or to enable us to attain to this conception. We may regard them but as types, or metaphors, or allegories: But he is the thing to be expressed; and the feeling and the intellect, of which all these are but shadows.

The events, such as they are, upon which the piece may be said to turn, have all taken place long before its opening, and are but dimly shadowed out in the casual communications of the agonising being to whom they relate. Nobly born and trained in the castle of his ancestors, he had very soon sequestered himself from the society of men; and, after running through the common circle of human sciences, had dedicated himself to the worship of the wild magnificence of nature, and to those forbidden studies by which he had learned to command its presiding powers.One companion, however, he had, in all his tasks and enjoyments-a female of kindred genius, taste, and capacity-lovely too beyond all loveliness; but, as we gather, too nearly related to be lawfully beloved. The catastrophe of their unhappy passion is insinuated in the darkest and most ambiguous termsall that we make out is, that she died untimely and by violence, on account of this fatal attachment-though not by the act of its object. He killed her, he says, not with his hand--but his heart; and her blood was shed, though not by him! From that hour, life is a burden to him, and memory a torture -and the extent of his power and knowledge serves only to show him the hopelessness and endlessness of his misery.

Nor flattering throb, that beats with hopes of
wishes,

Or lurking love of something on the earth.-
Now to my task."—pp. 7, 8.

When his evocation is completed, a star is seen at the far end of a gallery, and celestial voices are heard reciting a great deal of poetry, After they have answered that the gift of oblivion is not at their disposal, and intimated that death itself could not bestow it on him, they ask if he has any further demand to make of them. He answers,

"No, none: yet stay!-one moment, ere we
I would behold ye face to face. I hear
Your voices, sweet and melancholy sounds
[part-
As music on the waters; and I see
The steady aspect of a clear large star;
But nothing more. Approach me as ye are,
Or one, or all, in your accustom'd forms.
Of which we are the mind and principle:
Spirit. We have no forms beyond the elements
But choose a form-in that we will appear.
Man. I have no choice; there is no form on earth
Hideous or beautiful to me. Let him

Who is most powerful of ye, take such aspect
As unto him may seem most fitting.-Come!
Seventh Spirit. (Appearing in the shape of a
beautiful female figure.) Behold!'
M. Oh God! if it be thus, and thou
Art not a madness and a mockery,
yet might be most happy.-I will clasp thee.
And we again will be- [The figure vanishes.
My heart is crush'd!

[MANFRED falls senseless."-pp. 15, 16. formance ends with a long poetical incantaThe first scene of this extraordinary pertion, sung by the invisible spirits over the senseless victim before them. The second shows him in the bright sunshine of morning, on the top of the Jungfrau mountain, medisolitude as usual the voice of his habitual tating self-destruction-and uttering forth in despair, and those intermingled feelings of ful objects with which he is environed, that love and admiration for the grand and beauti unconsciously win him back to a certain kindly sympathy with human enjoyments.

"Man. The spirits I have raised abandon meThe spells which I have studied baffle me— The remedy I reck'd of tortured me ; The piece opens with his evocation of the It hath no power upon the past, and for I lean no more on superhuman aid : Spirits of the Elements, from whom he de- The future, till the past be gulf'd in darkness, mands the boon of forgetfulness-and ques-It is not of my search.-My mother Earth! tions them as to his own immortality. The scene is in his Gothic tower at midnight-and opens with a soliloquy that reveals at once the state of the speaker, and the genius of

the author.

The lamp must be replenish'd-but even then
It will not burn so long as I must watch!
Philosophy and science, and the springs
Of wonder, and the wisdom of the world,
I have essayed, and in my mind there is
A power to make these subject to itself-
But they avail not: I have done men good,
And I have met with good even among men—
But this avail'd not: I have had my foes,
And none have baffled, many fallen before me-
But this avail'd not :-Good, or evil, life,
Powers, passions, all I see in other beings,
Have been to me as rain unto the sands,
Since that all-nameless hour! I have no dread,
And feel the curse to have no natural fear,

And thou fresh breaking Day, and you, ye Moun
Why are ye beautiful? I cannot love ye. [tains,
That openest over all, and unto all
And thou, the bright eye of the universe,
Art a delight-thou shin'st not on my heart.
And you, ye crags, upon whose extreme edge
I stand, and on the torrent's brink beneath
Behold the tall pines dwindled as to shrubs
In dizziness of distance; when a leap,
A stir, a motion, even a breath, would bring
My breast upon its rocky bosom's bed
To rest for ever-wherefore do I pause?
Ay,
Thou winged and cloud-cleaving minister,

[An eagle passer

Whose happy flight is highest into heaven,
Well may'st thou swoop so near me-I should be
Thy prey, and gorge thine eaglets! thou art gone
Where the eye cannot follow thee; but thine eye
Yet piercest downward, onward, or above
With a pervading vision.-Beautiful!
How beautiful is all this visible world'