Between a prison and a palace, where
How few could feel for what he had to bear!
Vain his complaint, my lord presents his bill,
His food and wine were doled out duly still:
Vain was his sickness,-never was a clime
So free from homicide-to doubt's a crime;
And the stiff surgeon, who maintained his cause,
Hath lost his place, and gained the world's applause.
But smile-though all the pangs of brain and heart
Disdain, defy, the tardy aid of art;

Though, save the few fond friends, and imaged face
Of that fair boy his sire shall ne'er embrace,
None stand by his low bed-though even the mind
Be wavering, which long awed and awes mankind;
Smile-for the fettered eagle breaks his chain,
And higher worlds than this are his again.

The subject of the next poem which Lord Byron published was suggested by the description given, in Mariner's Account of the Tonga Islands,' of the fertility and beauty of that singular, and to us almost new, country. Lord Byron's mind received a most powerful and highly-pleasing impression from that account. He was never tired of talking of it to his friends, and announced his intention of introducing into some of his works the new and poetical feelings which his fancy had conjured up in connexion with a country rich in all the productions of nature, and uncorrupted by the vices of civilization. He was for some time at a loss for a subject, which, indeed, it must be obvious to every one, is not very easy to be found. History has as yet had little to do with the countries to which the descriptions were to refer, and without some foundation it is almost impossible to build up enough of a narration to answer the purpose even of a poem. It was no less difficult so to connect the doings of the inhabitants of the old world with those of the new one as to excite thes ympathies of such as were to be his readers. At length, in the history of the mutiny by the crew of the Bounty, in the South Seas, in the year 1789, Lord Byron found the materials which, in his hands, were soon wrought into the shape which he required.

Captain Bligh had been sent out on an expedition to the South Seas, generally for scientific purposes; and to make discoveries as well respecting the navigation in those latitudes, of which very little was then known, as to add to the knowledge which was already pos

sessed in Europe of the natural productions of the countries which bordered them. To transplant the bread-tree was also one of the objects of his labours. Captain Bligh had made a long voyage, in which, although he had encountered many difficulties and hardships, he had been tolerably successful. He had made a stay of twenty-three weeks at the island of Otaheite, where he had procured some valuable additions to his collections. The crew behaved very well; and with a large, and in his situation a very valuable cargo, Captain Bligh sailed for home. A few days afterwards, while the ship was near one of the South-Sea Islands, Captain Bligh was awakened in the moruing by finding himself seized by some of his crew: they bound him, and carried him on deck with many threats. Fletcher Christian, the master's mate, was the leader of this mutiny; and by him all the rest of the rebellious crew were commanded. The long-boat was then lowered, and such of the crew as were, or were supposed to be, attached to the captain's interests-in all fourteen persons-were ordered into her. Some cordage, and a very small quantity of provisions, being stowed in the boat, the captain was released, and made to join the boat's crew. The mutineers offered him no other violence; but, casting off, the boat was left to make its way as well as it could. After the most dreadful difficulties Captain Bligh reached England; but the whole of his labours had been, of course, frustrated by the loss of his ship, and the collections which it contained. The mutineers went back to Otaheite, where they remained until a ship, which had been dispatched from England for the purpose of bringing the mutineers to justice, arrived there. Some of the mutineers were Laken; others were killed in defending themselves, and of the latter number was Christian. The inducements to the mutiny are supposed, by Captain Bligh, to have been the beauty and amiability of the women of Otaheite, as well as the richness and salubrity of the climate:

'It will naturally be asked,' he says, 'what could be the cause of such a revolt? In answer, I can only conjecture that the mutineers had flattered themselves with the hope of a happier life among the Otaheitans than they could possibly enjoy in England; which, joined to some female connexions, most probably occasioned the whole transaction.

The women of Otaheite are handsome, inild, and cheerful in manners and conversation; possessed of great sensibility; and have sufficient delicacy to make them be admired and beloved. The chiefs were so much attached to our people, that they rather encouraged their stay

among them than otherwise, and even made them promises of large possessions. Under these and many other concomitant circumstances, it ought hardly to be the subject of surprise that a set of sailors, most of them void of connexions, should be led away, where they had the power of fixing themselves in the midst of plenty, in one of the finest islands in the world, where there was no necessity to labour, and where the allurements of dissipation are beyond any conception that can be formed of it. The utmost, however, that a commander could have expected, was desertions, such as have already happened more or less in the South Seas, and not an act of open mutiny.'

Upon this subject, and availing himself particularly of the latter topic, in order to introduce that interest which is indispensably necessary to poems of this sort, Lord Byron founded his poem of The Island, or Christian and his Comrades.'

The first canto is occupied with telling the tale of the mutiny. The second begins with a paraphrase of the prose translation from one of the songs of the Tonga islanders, printed in Mariner's Account.' It is extremely pretty; and the mode of expressing the idea of sweetness and beauty being connected with the flowers which bloom over the graves of heroes is new-at least to our poetry:

'Come, let us to the islet's softest shade,

And hear the warbling birds!' the damsels said:
The wood-dove from the forest depth shall coo,
Like voices of the gods from Bolotoo;

We'll cull the flowers that grow above the dead,

For these most bloom where rests the warrior's head;

And we will sit in twilight's face, and see

The sweet moon glancing through the tooa tree,
The lofty accents of whose sighing bough

Shall sadly please us as we lean below;

Or climb the steep, and view the surf in vain

Wrestle with rocky giants o'er the main,

Which spurn in columns back the baffled spray.

How beautiful are these! how happy they,

Who, from the toil and tumult of their lives,

Steal to look down where nought but Ocean strives!

Even he too loves at times the blue lagoon,

And smooths his ruled mane beneath the moon.

Yes-from the sepulchre we'll gather flowers,
Then feast like spirits in their promised bowers,
Then plunge and revel in the rolling surf,
Then lay our limbs along the tender turf,

And, wet and shining from the sportive toil,
Anoint our bodies with the fragant oil,

And plait our garlands gathered from the grave,

And wear the wreaths that sprung from out the brave.
But lo night comes, the Mooa wooes us back.

Then we are introduced to Torquil, a young Scotch islander, one of the mutineers, and the swarthy beauty whose charms have drawn him to Otaheite, and for whom he has renounced all the allurements and advantages of the civilized world. The description of La belle Sauvage is very beautiful:

There sat the gentle savage of the wild,

In growth a woman, though in years a child,
As childhood dates within our colder clime,
Where nought is ripened rapidly save crime;
The infant of an infant world, as pure
From Nature-lovely, warm, and premature;
Dusky like Night, but Night with all her stars,
Or cavern sparkling with its native spars;
With eyes that were a language and a spell,
A form like Aphrodite's in her shell!
With all her loves around her on the deep,
Voluptuous as the first approach of sleep;
Yet full of life-for through her tropic cheek
The blush would makes its way, and all but speak ;
The sun-born blood suffused her neck, and threw
O'er her clear nut-brown skin a lucid hue,
Like coral reddening through the darkened wave,
Which draws the diver to the crimson cave.
Such was this daughter of the Southern Seas,
Herself a billow in her energies,

To bear the bark of others' happiness,
Nor feel a sorrow till their joy grew less:
Her wild and warm, yet faithful, bosom knew
No joy like what it gave; her hopes ne'er drew

Aught from experience, that chill touchstone, whose

Sad proof reduces all things from their hues :
She feared no ill, because she knew it not,

Or what she knew was soon-too soon-forgot:
Her smiles and tears had passed, as light winds pass
O'er lakes, to ruffle, not destroy, their glass,

Whose depths unsearched, and fountains from the hill,
Restore their surface, in itself so still,

Until the earthquake tear the Naiad's cave,
Root up the spring, and trample on the wave,
And crush the living waters to a mass,

The amphibious desert of the dank morass!
And must their fate be hers? The eternal change
But grasps humanity with quicker range;

And they who fall but fall as worlds will fall,

To rise, if just, a spirit o'er them all.

The passion of the young lovers-that passion which Lord Byron always described so well and so powerfully-is told with exquisite delicacy:

The love which maketh all things fond and fair—
The youth which makes one rainbow of the air—
The dangers past, that make even man enjoy
The pause in which he ceases to destroy-
The mutual beauty, which the sternest feel
Strike to their hearts like lightning to the steel-
United the half savage and the whole,
The maid and boy, in one absorbing soul.
No more the thundering memory of the fight
Wrapped his weaned bosom in its dark delight;
No more the irksome restlessness of Rest
Disturbed him like the eagle in her nest,
Whose wetted beak and far-pervading eye
Darts for a victim over all the sky;

His heart was tamed to that voluptuous state,

At once Elysian and effeminate,

Which leaves no laurels o'er the hero's urn.

Rapt in the fond forgetfulness of life,

Neuha, the South-Sea girl, was all a wife,