wearied with the unexampled length and tediousness of the before mentioned four hours' sermon ;-secondly, I was desirous to partake of either Ram-Jam, MidRow, or Pinkie, three denominations of ale, for which the landlord was become deservedly famous, and in the brewing of which, weak nerves, as well as a good head, had been doubtless consulted ;and, thirdly and lastly, a dark-eyed damsel from the mountains wished for my private opinion anent the sinfulness of dancing, and to instruct me in a near road over the hills to her father's house, which stood in a remote glen on the stream of Ae. While deeply employed in taking a chart of this desart path, I could not avoid remarking with what particular gravity all were drinking, and many getting drunk. Consolation had been poured forth in no stinted tide, for a huge wall of empty vessels flanked the entrance. The proprietor of this house of call for the thirsty, was a ruddy carrotyheaded rustic, who had contrived to draw down his cheeks for the occasion, in a manner unusually solemn. He sat apart busied, or apparently busied, with that chief of all sage books, the Young Man's Best Companion; while his daughter, as active a girl as ever chalked a score to a thirsty man, managed the business. But his mind bad wandered into a long and studious calculation of the probable profit in his fermentations, and the Book, which was only put there as a decoy to the godly, was neg. lected. I contrived to withdraw it unperceived from before him, and for this feat I was rewarded by a grim smile from a broad bonneted son of Cameron, and a snuff from a Tuphorn with a silver lid. On returning to the meeting, the stars were beginning to glimmer, amongst the thin mist of the summer evening, and I could see groupes, already at some distance, of the spectators retiring home. Far differently demeaned themselves the pious remnant. They crowded round their preacher's tent after the repose of a brief intermission, and I left them enjoying a mysterious lecture on Permission, Predestination, FreeGrace, The Elect, and Effectual Calling. I am now, and I say it with sorrow, far removed from the society of those exemplary and pious people; and I heard, I confess, with something of an old Cameronian spirit and regret, that a proposition has been made to remove the meeting House, into the neighbouring town of Dumfries. Of my old favourites, few I understand survive, and year after year lessens the number of those devout men who regularly passed my Father's window on the Sabbath morn. Mr. Farely has long since been numbered with the blessed-and Jean Robson, a very singular and devout character, has also rested from her labour of instructing the youth of the Cameronians. She taught the writer of this imperfect account to read-the Bible, and the famed Prophecies of Alexander Peden. She tore the leaf from the Bible which said, "James, by the Grace of God, Defender of the Faith," and denounced the name of Sunday as Popish, or what was worse, Prelatical, and caused us all to call it the Sabbath. She died 83 years old. She used to flog her scholars, and exclaim,-"Thou art an evil one-a worker of iniquity" while the tawse and tongue kept time and told sharply. The Cameronians make few converts few people are fond of inflicting on themselves willingly the penance of controversial prayers and interminable sermons. There is a falling off in the amount of the Flock. My friend, the weaver, became a convert from conviction. Another of the converts joined the cause in the decline of life,not without suspicion of discontent, because his gifts had been overlooked by the minister of the parish kirk, in a recent nomination of elders. He was fond of argu. ment, and seemed not unwilling to admit the potent auxiliaries of sword and gun on behalf of the cause. On one occasion, he grew wroth with the ready wit of a neighbouring peasant, on the great litigated point of patronage-and seizing the readiest weapon of his wrath, a hazel hoop-for he was a cooperexclaimed, "Reviler-retire-else I'll make your head saft with this rung." On another time, he became exasperated VOL. 6.] Character of Lord Byron's Poetry. at the irreverent termination of an epigram on a tippling blacksmith, which was attributed to Burns, who then resided within sight-at Elisland. On the last day, When sober men to judgment rise, The honest Covenanter, after three days and three nights meditation, brought forth his expostulation with the mighty bard of Caledonia. It commences thus Robert Burns ye were nae wise To gie to Rodds sic an advice. It has lost all its attraction since the voice of its author is mute, for who can repeat it as he did the pithy preliminary remarks on the great poet's morals -the short Cameronian cough-the 337 melodious trail of the tongue-and the frequent intrusion of explanatory notes, which the uninspired could not always distinguish from the poem itself, all these things are departed and passed away, and the verses sleep as quietly as the dust of the poet. Two other occasional converts scarcely deserve noticeone of them was saved from thorough conviction by the well-timed exaltation to a neighbouring precentership, and the other has returned to his seat in the kirk, since the dark-eyed daughter of an adjacent Cameronian gave her hand, and it was a white one, to one of the chosen who was laird of an acre of peatmoss-and I have not heard of any other damsel of the covenant having caused him to relapse. CHARACTER OF LORD BYRON'S POETRY. From the New Monthly Magazine, Nov. 1819, magis deficit quam proficit. Qui proficit in literis, deficit tamen in moribus, particularly as I have nothing to hope or to fear, to win or to lose; I enter not without emotion, but A JUST estimate of national moral- the arena ity,it is said, may always be made wholly without anxiety; and in the from the state of national literature. oonflict I call to the public to "strike The proposition is not universally true; but hear." I have seen the strong sense where literature is thinly diffused the and caustic spirit of the writer of the morals of the country must be measured Baviad employed below their powers to by another standard. But when a "whip me those vermin," who fivecountry is in so high a state of civiliza- and-twenty years ago stained paper tion, that literature has become an ocwith the "ropy drivel of rheumatic cupation instead of an amusementbrains," and break on the wheel the when books are so rapidly circulated butterfly forms of Anna Matilda, Lau-` and so universally read, that half the ra Maria, and Della Crusca, cum multis stock of the nation's ideas are borrowed aliis; I have seen the powerful club of from its writers-when men begin to the Anti-Jacobin Magazine wielded talk more of what is written than of with resistless effect against the hydrawhat is done, and authors come to leg- monster of the German school, and deislate to our opinions and our passions, molish, blow after blow, and every then the state of our national liter- blow a death, all the sprouting imps of ature, and the tone of the popular wri- the brood, who, in the language of the Darwinian school, "breathed the soft ters, become an object of the deepest interest; for as the people of a country hiss, or tried the fainter yell." But read so will they feel, and as they feel these were like the tormenting insects so will they act. we brush away in an evening's walk-they tease and they buz, but there is no strength in their wing, and no lasting venom in their sting: they "come like But now I feel shadows, so depart.' It is this circumstance that has forced my attention to the present favourites of literature. I am a man advanced in life, and neither irascible or jealous, 2T ATHENEUM VOL. 6. like one who, after having got rid of those insects that tormented him, and hoping that the close of his progress may be unmolested, sees to his terror and astonishment a meteor rising above the horizon," perplexing him with fear of change;" a meteor, the elements of whose orbit are beyond all calculation, whose fiery hair shakes "pestilence" though not war-and who retires troubled and anxious how the night so portentously ushered in may end. It must be obvious that I allude to Lord Byron-a phenomenon to whom the literature of no age can produce a parallel would that he were not a greater phenomenon, if possible, in the moral than in the intellectual worldwould that the inscription which posterity must place on the pedestal to which modern idolatry has raised him, were not to be like that placarded on the statue of Louis XVth.: "Sans foi, sans loi, et sans entrailles." I feel bis genius-I know his popularity-I know his power-I care not; power, when employed in the cause of evil, only calls for a louder cry of denunciation if it may be resisted, or of deprecation if it may be averted. I will say what I think, and let his idolaters think what they say. I am aware of the danger I incur in attacking the popular idol, but I heed it not; he is like the image in the dream of the king of Baby lon, he is part gold and silver, but part brass and clay, and such an image must fall and be broken in pieces. once. glaring colours-are overcome by its oppressive odour; but we sicken while we praise, and, before we have ceased to praise, the object of our admiration has sickened too. There is, I allow, a fearful excess of genius and passion, when united, that obliterates for a moment the distinction between right and wrong, and makes us half believe, that vice so dignified is almost virtue, and virtue so overshadowed almost loses its lustre. But this union of powerful talent and intense feeling is very rare; the Jewish theology distinguished well between the spirits who knew most, and the spirits who love most. Lord Byron has no excuse from that dangerous union of mental enthusiasm, and heartborn passion, that may lead far astray the minds of youthful poets when they love, but leaves behind it a glorious and fearful light, like that which follows the erratic path of the meteor. There is a generous and almost noble vice in that superb devotion, that "proud humility," with which we prostrate ourselves before the object of our earthly adoration, it has (I speak it with reverence) many of the characteristics of true religion; it has the same spirit of self-resignation, of humiliation, of profound abjection of spirit, of an utter prostration of all its powers, mental and bodily, before the idol for whom it is dearer to die than to live for the first object on earth-such is the enthusiasm of youthful passion. Lord Byron has nothing of this; he makes love like a sensualist, or a bandit; he loves only to enjoy, or to ravage; he stoops not to admire the brilliant colours, or to inhale the delicious odour of the flower; if he stoops it is to crush, to trample, and to destroy; he never remarks or commends one single moral or mental quality in the object of his passion; he appreciates her with all the callous and calcula Time and morality will deal alternate blows at its perishable frame, like the giant-statues with their flails in the visionary adventure of Roderic. The blows of the former are slow-the blows of the latter are sometimes decisive at What has become of Rochester, and Sedley, and Vanburgh, and Wycherly? Nay, who reads Dryden now without wishing his pages expurgated-ting brutality of a slave-merchant (in immoral poetry was never long-lived. Let the noble writer remember that, and let his admirers remember it tooa brief and forced existence is bestowed on it from the hot-bed of contemporary pruriency of feeling-we wonder at its rapid growth-we are dazzled by its the miserable countries in which he wastes his existence) by her locks that sweep the ground, or her naked feet that outshine the marble: he is a Mahomet (vacillating between lust and ferocity) who would grasp the bright locks of his Irene, and strike off her head before his VOL. 6.j Character of Lord Byron's Poetry. bashaws, pour un coup de theatre. The man knows nothing of passion. There is also a pardonable enthusiasm in youth the brilliant and seductive colouring with which imagination paints the deformity of life-it is venial-it is almost justifiable to represent it to others in this light. We have not to fear that the deception will be continued: perhaps we have to fear it may be dispelled too soon-in travelling through the desert of life, if a delirious companion points out to us a mirage, and invites us to drink, we cannot but sympathize with the delusion we almost partake of. Reality is equally insufficient for the demands of the imagination and of the heart, and poets, the slaves of both, may be forgiven if they paint with glowing and exaggerated touches a world of their own, a world of love and music, and fragrance, of flowers that steal their balmy spoils from Paradise, and airs that "lap us in Elysium :" and if they dwell too much on the first of these exquisite elements of their paradise we pardon them, for we feel that life has already undeceived us, and will soon undeceive them; they will learn that hatred is much more the business of the world than love; that in life, to speak the language of the schools, suffering is the essence and joy the accident. Almost the first strains of every poet have been devoted to Love, but his latter, or at least the greater part of his works, are dedicated to Grief. Even the muse of Moore (the loosest of modern poets) has latterly changed her garb and her accent, as the French say, to throw herself into religion. It is said she can accommodate herself even to the monotonous psalmodizing of a Hebrew synagogue-can in a fine la Valiere style resign the luxuries and magnificence of the court, embellished by her charms, and polluted by her depravity, for the coarse weeds and chilling austerity of a Carmelite penitent; or, to speak in a more awful metaphor, we hope the harlot has converted her dear ly-bought gains into the price of the ointment of her conversion, has bowed at her Saviour's feet, and wept there, 339 and wiped them with those rich and redundant tressess so often garnished with meretricious decorations and displayed as the popular banner around which vice and voluptuousness were summoned to rally-tresses which should have rather streamed like the hair of Berenice, the ornament of earthly loveliness, and the symbol of celestial invitation-the light of earth, and the star of heaven. Youthful poets have had their errors, but they have had their reformation; the acute susceptibility, and feverish desire of excitement that led them far astray was a pledge of their happy return-the pendulum touched by no mortal hand vibrates beyond all mortal calculation, and the writer who set out in his triumphant career of folly, pruriency, and vice returns from his alternate os. cillation purged, purified and sanctified. None but minds of power can prove these extremes; all minds of power in their turn have proved them, they have erred, and are bid by the voice of man and God to "go and sin no more."The muse of Byron sets out at once in the extreme, her language is blasphemy, her character misanthropy, her passion hatred, her religion despair. have before spoken of that desert in which other writers have tried to rear the flower, or to flatter with the mirage. The horrors of the desert are not enough for this writer, he aggravates them by breathing over its wilds the icy Sarsar wind of death, and watching in its withering hiss the echoes of that blast, which announces the annihilating desolation of his own powerful and blasted mind-in the breath that exhales from his pages, no flower of life can bloomno verdure can flourish, no animal can live--the heart and its passions, life and its purposes, are alike suspended-nothing of creation can prosper; "the icy air burns fierce, and cold performs the effect of fire." What becomes of the convert of his poetical creed? (poetical creed, for he has no other,) the victim gazes around him, wonders why" or for what he lives-love is illusion-nature a name-religion a farce--and futurity a jest-the convert vows, believes in-nothing-" dies, and makes no sign." I ---But "God forgive" the author. In writing of Lord Byron do I dare to deny or depreciate the genius of the first poet of the age?-No-I were unworthy to be his meanest reader did I not confess to his immortal dishonour (let not those words be lightly esteemed), that he is a man whose intellectual powers might, like those of the ancient mathematician, shake the world from its place-God grant he may never find his or we may tremble for the dissolution of the moral universe.-I grant him genius "beyond the potentiality of intellectual avarice"-imagination that exalts worlds, and then imagines new-an eloquence of poetry that might draw after it the third part of heaven's host were they yet untempted -an imperial command of the whole region of poetry from its highest sumInit to its lowest declivity-an eye, whose reach extending beyond the range described by Shakspeare himself, scorns the restraint of that “ proud limitary cherub," and glances not only from heaven to earth, but from heaven to hell-a felicity, richness, a variety of poetical modulation, for which nothing is too lofty or too low, from the satire to the sonnet, from the epic to the ballad; which can combine and echo in the same lines misanthropy and mirth, levity and despair-that like the satanic host, when assembled in council, can contract or expand its dimensions at will, can to "smallest forms reduce its shape immense, and be at large" but still "amid the ball of that infernal court"-where he presides as the master demon-the god of hell-in all the dazzling glory of omnipotent depravity -the mind sinks under the task of eulogizing, or describing, or even imagining the powers of that "man-almighty" who like his prototype, in Kehama," plunges from the heaven he has violated to the hell he has obtained the empire of, and deserves to reigner. I would accumulate on him every expression that was ever dictated, uttered, or extorted, by the enthusiasm of praise, or the devotion of admiration; but when I had done so, I should feel I had been only heaping coals of fire on his head. 66 Every talent so depraved becomes a crime; the intellectual powers rise up in judgment against their betrayer, every line (however its echo may be drowned by infatuated praise) has a voice that says Why hast thou thus dealt with thy servant ?"-praise is the bitterest satire, and admiration a horrible and bollow mockery. I know no exaltation more terrible than intellectual eminence thus seated like the regicides of old in a chair of torture, crowned with a circle of burning metal, and whose anointing turns to poison as it drops on the head of the usurper-while all the subject talents that should "put to their mouths the sounding alchemy," turning away from the pomp "plead trumpet tongued against the deep damnation" of their apostate sovereign, and their own abused and prostituted energies. But I have spoken enough of Lord Byron, let him now speak for himself. The end of all poetry is to instruct or to please. He who seeks either from the perusal of Lord Byron, must have a singular taste-He must be prepared to look for it in the mingled and chaotic gloom of infidelity, misanthropy, political scepticism (the unfailing and dangerous companion of both), and the avowed and ostentatious abandonment of every moral principle, social duty, and domestic feeling" whatsoever things are pure, are lovely, are of good report-if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise," his reader must invert the rule of a writer very different from Lord Byron-he must NOT "think of these things." From Lord Byron's own pages I shall select proofs that the charge is not exaggerated. From a poet we expect something to exalt or to delight, we expect that if his subjects be connected with the best interests and feelings of man, his lines shall breathe a lofty spirit of religious devotion, a pure and high love of morality, that they will display all the enthusiasm of patriotism and the eloquence of passion, that all his public energies will be in their fullest vigour, all his so |