were placed a helmet, a sword, and a crown of laurel. ble of all extremes of expressior, from the mos The church was crowded to its utmost extent, dur- joyous hilarity to the deepest sadness, from the very ing the service. sunshine of benevolence to the most concentrated On the 2d of May the body was conveyed to Zante, scorn or rage. under a salute from the guns of the fortress. From But it was in the mouth and chin that the great thence, it was sent in the English brig Florida, in beauty of his countenance lay. Says a fair critic of charge of Col. Stanhope; and, being landed under his features, Many pictures have been painted of the direction of his Lordship's executors, Mr. Hob- him, with various success; but the excessive beauty house and Mr. Hanson, it was removed to the house of his lips escaped every painter and sculptor. In of Sir Edward Knatchbull, where it lay in state dur- their ceaseless play they represented every emotion, ing the 9th and 10th of July. On the 16th of July, whether pale with anger, or curled in disdain, smilthe last duties were paid to the remains of the great ing in triumph, or dimpled with archness and love. poet, by depositing them close to those of his mother, This extreme facility of expression was sometimes in the family vault in the small village church of painful, for I have seen him look absolutely ugly-I Hucknall, near Newstead. It is a somewhat singu- have seen him look so hard and cold that you must lar fact, that on the same day of the same month hate him, and then, in a moment, brighter than the in the preceding year, he said to Count Gamba, sun, with such playful softness in his look, such "Where shall we be in another year?" affectionate eagerness kindling in his eyes, and dimpling his lips into something more sweet than a smile, that you forgot the man, the Lord Byron, in the picture of beauty presented to you, and gazed with intense curiosity-I had almost said-as if to On a tablet of white marble, in the chancel of the church of Hucknall, is the following inscription: IN THE VAULT BENEATH, WHERE MANY OF HIS ANCESTORS AND HIS MOTHER satisfy yourself, that thus looked the god of poetry, ARE BURIED, LIE THE REMAINS OF GEORGE GORDON NOEL BYRON, LORD BYRON, OF ROCHDALE, 66 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE." HE DIED AT MISSOLONGHI, IN WESTERN GREECE, HIS SISTER, THE HONORABLE AUGUSTA MARIA LEIGH, PLACED THIS TABLET TO HIS MEMORY. Thus lived and died the poet Byron. With a mind, blest with an active genius, which but few are privileged to possess, he passed through this world, like a comet, on its bright but erratic course, leaving a luminous trace behind to mark his passage, and to keep his memory fresh in the hearts of many future generations. It is not our purpose, in this place, to speak of the general tone of his writings or of their influence. That he had faults, we are ready to admit; and that he had an inward goodness of heart, we are as ready to assert. But few men, with like temperament and associations with his, would have pursued a different course. In height he was five feet eight inches and a half. His hands were very white and small. Of his face, the beauty may be pronounced to have been of the highest order, as combining at once regularity of features with the most varied and interesting expression. His eyes were of a light gray, and capa-| the god of the Vatican, when he conversed with the sons and daughters of man." His head was small; the forehead high, on which glossy, dark-brown curls clustered. His teeth were white and regular, and his countenance colorless. He believed in the immortality of the soul. In one of his letters, he said that he once doubted it, but that reflection had taught him better. The publication of "Cain, a Mystery," brought down upon him the severest denunciations of many of the clergy, whose zeal took rapid flight and bore away their reason and judgment. They called it blasphemous. This, Lord Byron denied in the most positive terms. The misunderstanding was owing to the fact that Byron caused each of the characters to speak as it was supposed they would speak, judging from their actions, and that these fault-finders, who raised such an outcry, understood the language to be the belief of the author, than which nothing could be more unreasonable. At the time of Byron's death many tributes to his memory were paid by the most celebrated authors. Among them was one from Rogers, from which we take the following as best fitted, in closing thie sketch, to leave on the mind of our readers a just view of the strange and eventful life of the poet and at the same time to call forth that charity in judgment which it is our duty to bestow : CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE. A ROMAUNT. L'univers est une espèce de livre, dont on n'a lu que la première page quand on n'a vu que son pays. J'en PREFACE. the exception of a few concluding stanzas, the whole of this poem was written in the Levant. Tax following poem was written, for the most part, amid the scenes which it attempts to describe. most successful poets, admits of every variety. Dr The stanza of Spenser, according to one of our It was begun in Albania; and the parts relative to Beattie makes the following observation: "Not Spain and Portugal were composed from the author's long ago I began a poem in the style and stanza of observations in those countries. Thus much it may Spenser, in which I propose to give full scope to my be necessary to state for the correctness of the de- inclination, and be either droll or pathetic, descrip scriptions. The scenes attempted to be sketched tive or sentimental, tender or satirical, as the humor are in Spain, Portugal, Epirus, Acarnania, and strikes me; for, if I mistake not, the measure Greece. There for the present the poem stops: its which I have adopted admits equally of all these reception will determine whether the author may kinds of composition."-Strengthened in my opin venture to conduct his readers to the capital of the ion by such high authority, and by the example of East, through Ionia and Phrygia: these two cantos some in the highest order of Italian poets, I shall are merely experimental. A fictitious character is introduced for the sake of in the following composition; satisfied that, if they make no apology for attempts at similar variations giving some connexion to the piece; which, how- are unsuccessful, their failure must be in the execu ever, makes no pretension to regularity. It has tion, rather than in the design sanctioned by the been suggested to me by friends, on whose opinions practice of Ariosto, Thomson, and Feattie. ADDITION TO THE PREFACE. I set a high value, that in this fictitious character, "Childe Harold," I may incur the suspicion of having intended some real personage: this I beg leave, once for all, to disclaim-Harold is the child of imagination, for the purpose I have stated. In some very trivial particulars, and those merely local, there might be grounds for such a notion; but in the main points, I should hope, none whatever. I HAVE now waited till almost all our periodical It is almost superfluous to mention that the ap-criticism. To the justice of the generality of their journals have distributed their usual portion of pellation "Childe," as "Childe Waters," "Childe criticisms I have nothing to object; it would ill beChilders," &c., is used as more consonant with the come me to quarrel with their very slight degree of old structure of the versification which I have adopted. The "Good Night," in the beginning of censure, when, perhaps, if they had been less kind the first canto, was suggested by "Lord Maxwell's they had been more candid. Returning, therefore, Good Night," in the Border Minstrelsy, edited by Mr. Scott. to all and each my best thanks for their liberality. on one point alone shall I venture an observation. Among the many objections justly urged to the very With the different poems which have been pub-indifferent character of the "vagrant Childe," lished on Spanish subjects, there may be found some (whom, notwithstanding many hints to the con slight coincidence in the first part, which treats of the Peninsula, but it can 3 only be casual; as, with) Beattie's Leuer. trary, I still maintain to be a fictitious personage,)| Before the days of Bayard, and down to those of Sir Joseph Banks, (the most chaste and celebrated of ancient and modern times,) few exceptions will be found to this statement, and I fear a little inves-i tigation will teach us not to regret these monstrous mummeries of the middle ages. I now leave "Childe Harold," to live his day, such as he is; it had been more agreeable, and certainly more easy, to have drawn an amiable character. It had been easy to varnish over his faults, to make him do more and express less, but he never was intended as an example, further than to show that early perversion of mind and morals leads to satiety of past pleasures and disappointment in new ones, and that even the beauties of nature, and the stimulus of travel (except ambition, the most powerful of all excitements) are lost on a soul so constituted, or rather misdirected. Had I pro ceeded with the poem, this character would have deepened as he drew to the close; for the outline which I once meant to fill up for him was, with Some exceptions, the sketch of a modern Timon, perhaps a poetical Zeluco. • The Rovers. Antijace bin. TO IANTHE. NoT in those climes where I have late been straying, Though Beauty long hath there been matchless Not in those visions to the heart displaying Ah! may'st thou ever be what now thou art, Young Peri of the West!-'tis well for me decreed. Oh! let that eye, which, wild as the Gazelle's, Such is thy name with this my verse entwined; Of him who hail'd thee, loveliest as ou wast, |