He seems to have considered that what is solid and substantial, can receive little increase or diminution of value, from mere varieties of form and distribution; and, in like manner, it has lately been discovered, that poetical fragments may, without inconvenience, be substituted for epic or other poems. It is obvious, that to embellish striking incidents by splendid description, is the boast of the poet, and that from these exertions of his fancy must be derived the principal enjoyment of the reader. Hence it seems to follow, that the interests of both parties may be promoted, by agreeing to reduce every species of composition to its quintessence, and to omit, by common consent, the many insipid ingredients which swelled the redundant narratives of our ancestors. This practice, recommended by the example of Lord Byron, and by that of his literary friend to whom the Giaour is dedicated, would probably have been adopted by a crowd of imitators, but that the new convert, no less inconstant than eccentric, has again suddenly deserted his leader, and has exhibited, in his second Turkish tale, a model of a species of composition equally free from constraint, and equally susceptible of every degree and variety of ornament.

The Giaour has been, we believe, very generally admired; but this admiration has been accompanied by almost equally general complaints of the obscurity in which the author has thought fit, not unfrequently, to envelop his meaning; and we still doubt, whether our own attempts to pierce through that obscurity have been quite successful. It has, indeed, been urged, by persons of deep penetration, that this is solely our own fault, because the tale is, in fact, extremely simple. But this is to mis-state the objection, not to answer it. No man can have supposed, that Lord Byron has failed in rendering intelligible to his readers, a very short and plain tale, which he has related both in prose and in verse; neither is it from any abruptness in the transitions from one incident to another, that perplexity arises; but the dramatic form into which the poem is cast, being often very indistinctly traced, the reader is not always able, without a painful effort of attention, to keep his feelings in unison with the changes of scenery and character.

The tale which these disjointed fragments present, (says Lord Byron in a prefatory advertisement,) is founded upon circumstances now less common in the east than formerly; either because the ladies are more circumspect than in the "olden time;" or because the Christians have better fortune, or less enterprize. The story, when entire, contained the adventures of a female slave, who was thrown, in the Mussulman manner, into the sea for infidelity, and avenged by a young Venetian, her lover, at the time the Seven Islands were possessed by the republic of Venice, and soon after the Arnauts were beaten back from the Morea, which they had ravaged for some time subsequent to the Russian invasion.'

And he adds, in a note at the conclusion of the poem,

'I heard the story by accident recited by one of the coffee-house story-tellers who abound in the Levant, and sing or recite their narratives. The additions and interpolations by the translator will be easily distinguished from the rest by the want of eastern imagery; and I regret that my memory has retained so few fragments of the original.'

From this outline it appears that the tale in question, though partly formed on the commonest model of oriental fable, was distinguished by one striking peculiarity. In eastern love-stories the heroine is usually either preserved to her lover by means of some miraculous and preternatural agency, or consigned, with very little ceremony, to death and oblivion; because, in a country where every man is, or may become possessor of a haram, the reciter and hearer of a story will generally be disposed to acquiesce in the necessity of maintaining a severe domestic police, and in the moral fitness of strangling or drowning every female convicted of infidelity. But in the present instance, the seducer of the lovely Leila is a Christian; that is, according to the courtesy of the Mahometan vocabulary, a giaour or unbeliever, who has the audacity to form and execute the desperate project of revenging the death of his murdered mistress, by the sacrifice of her executioner. It is evident that the delineation of such a character is well suited to poetry; and it was, perhaps, further recommended to Lord Byron, by a recollection of the scene in which he first heard it, of the impression which it made on an eastern audience, and of the grotesque declamation and gestures of the Turkish story-teller.

The poem commences with a sort of prologue, intended to describe the sensations which a prospect of the shores of Greece, during a calm summer's day, would be likely to awaken in a mind duly impressed with admiration of the ancient glory of that country, and with disgust at the moral degradation of its present inhabitants. On this theme the poet expatiates with great delight; and we cannot refrain from quoting the following highly wrought and characteristic specimen.

'He who hath bent him o'er the dead,

Ere the first day of death is fled;
The first dark day of nothingness,
The last of danger and distress;
(Before Decay's effacing fingers

Have swept the lines where beauty lingers,)
And mark'd the mild angelic air-

The rapture of repose that's there-
The fixed yet tender traits that streak
The languor of the placid cheek,
And-but for that sad shrouded eye,

VOL. X. NO. XX.

Y

That

That fires not--wins not-weeps not-now--
And but for that chill changeless brow,
Where cold Obstruction's apathy
Appals the gazing mourner's heart,
As if to him it could impart

The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon-
Yes-but for these and these alone,

Some moments-aye-one treacherous hour,
He still might doubt the tyrant's power,
So fair-so calm-so softly seal'd
The first-last look-by death reveal'd!
Such is the aspect of this shore-

'Tis Greece-but living Greece no more!
So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,
We start for soul is wanting there.
Her's is the loveliness in death,

That parts not quite with parting breath;
But beauty with that fearful bloom,
That hue which haunts it to the tomb-
Expression's last receding ray,

A gilded halo hovering round decay,

The farewell beam of Feeling past away!

Spark of that flame-perchance of heavenly birth-

Which gleams-but warms no more its cherish'd earth!' pp. 4, 5. It is difficult not to sympathize with the sensibility which dictated the first of these descriptions; and although some cold-blooded readers may, possibly, be unable to discover any analogy between the human soul and the soul of a landscape, or to comprehend the species of death which the soil and climate of Greece may be supposed to have undergone, even such readers will, probably, admire the artful and brilliant metaphors by which the poet has connected these apparently incongruous images.

After this general introduction, which has received many improvements since the first edition of the poem, the reader is led to the immediate scene of action, and obtains a slight view of the reciter of the tale. This is a Turkish fisherman, who has been employed during the day in the gulf of Ægina, and in the evening, apprehensive of the Mainote pirates who infest the coast of Attica, lands with his boat in the harbour of Port Leone, the ancient Piræus. He becomes the eye-witness of nearly all the incidents in the story, and in one of them is a principal agent. It is to his feelings, and particularly to his religious prejudices, that we are indebted for some of the most forcible and splendid parts of the poem; and yet, we know not why, the author has not vouchsafed to give him a formal introduction to his readers.

Scarcely has he reached the beach, when his attention is arrested

'Who

Who thundering comes on blackest steed,
With slacken'd bit and hoof of speed?
Beneath the clattering iron's sound
The cavern'd echoes wake around
In lash for lash, and bound for bound;
The foam that streaks the courser's side,
Seems gather'd from the ocean-tide:
Though weary waves are sunk to rest,
There's none within his rider's breast,
And though to-morrow's tempest lower,
"Tis calmer than thy heart, young Giaour!
I know thee not, I loathe thy race,
But in thy lineaments I trace

What time shall strengthen, not efface;
Though young and pale, that sallow front
Is scath'd by fiery passion's brunt,
Though bent on earth thine evil eye
As meteor like thou glidest by,

Right well I view, and deem thee one
Whom Othman's sons should slay or shun.

'On-on he hastened-and he drew
My gaze of wonder as he flew
Though like a demon of the night
He passed and vanished from my sight;
His aspect and his air impressed

A troubled memory on my breast;

And long upon my startled ear

Rung his dark courser's hoofs of fear.'-pp. 9, 10.

Every gesture of the impetuous horseman is full of anxiety and of passion. In the midst of his career, whilst in full view of the astonished spectator, he suddenly checks his steed, and rising on his stirrup, surveys, with a look of agonizing impatience, the distant city illuminated for the feast of Bairam; then pale with anger, raises his arm as if in menace of an invisible enemy; but awakened from his trance of passion by the neighing of his charger, again hurries forward, and disappears.

The hour is past, the Giaour is gone,

And did he fly or fall alone?

Woe to that hour he came or went,
The curse for Hassan's sin was sent
To turn a palace to a tomb;

He came, he went, like the Simoom,
That harbinger of fate and gloom,
Beneath whose widely-wasting breath
The very cypress droops to death-

Dark tree-still sad, when others' grief is fled,
The only constant mourner o'er the dead!

Y 2

The

For the stream has shrunk from its marble bed,

Where the weeds and the desolate dust are spread.
"Twas sweet of yore to see it play

And chase the sultriness of day

As springing high the silver dew
In whirls fantastically flew,

And flung luxurious coolness rouna

The air, and verdure o'er the ground.

"Twas sweet, when cloudless stars were bright,

To view the wave of watery light,

And hear its melody by night.

And oft had Hassan's Childhood played
Around the verge of that cascade;

And oft upon his mother's breast
That sound had harmonized his rest;
And oft had Hassan's Youth along
Its bank been sooth'd by Beauty's song;
And softer seemed each melting tone
Of Music mingled with its own.—
But ne'er shall Hassan's Age repose
Along the brink at Twilight's close-
The stream that filled that font is fled-
The blood that warmed his heart is shed!-
And here no more shall human voice

Be heard to rage-regret-rejoice-
The last sad note that swelled the gale
Was woman's wildest funeral wail-
That quenched in silence-all is still,
But the lattice that flaps when the wind is shrill-
Though raves the gust, and floods the rain,

No hand shall close its clasp again.'-p. 14, &c.

We have given this long quotation, not only because it contains much brilliant and just description, but because we think that this part of the narrative is managed with unusual taste. The fisherman has, hitherto, related nothing more than the extraordinary phe nomenon which had excited his curiosity, and of which it is his immediate object to explain the cause to his hearers; but instead of proceeding to do so, he stops to vent his execrations on the Giaour, to describe the solitude of Hassan's once luxurious haram,

and