Poor LITTLE! Sweet, melodious bard! That he, who sang before all,- And yet, while Beauty's praise is thine, Thy soothing lays may still be read, Still I must yield those worthies merit, Bad rhymes, and those who write them; I really will not fight them.(2) Perhaps they would do quite as well Now, Clare, I must return to you; Accept, then, my concession. In truth, dear Clare, in fancy's flight My muse admires digression. I think I said 't would be your fate (1) These stanzas were written soon after the appearance of a severe critique, in a northern review, on a new 1 publication of the British Anacreon.-[See Edinburgh Review, July, 1807, article on Epistles, Odes, and other Poems, by Thomas Little, Esq.-L. E.] (2) A bard (borresco referens) defied his reviewer to mortal combat. If this example becomes prevalent, our periodical censors must be dipped in the river Styx; for what else can secure them from the numerous host of their enraged assailants? | (3) "Of all I have ever known, Clare has always been the least altered in every thing from the excellent qualities and kind affections which attached me to him so strongly at school. I should hardly have thought it possible for society (or the world, as it is called) to leave a being with so little of the leaven of bad passions. I do not speak from personal experience only, but from all I have ever heard of hi from others, during absence and distance."-Diary, 1821-L. E. (5) This will not appear extraordinary to those who have been accustomed to the mountains. It is by no means uncommon, on attaining the top of Ben-e-vis, Ben-e-bourd, etc. to perceive, between the summit and the valley, clouds pouring down rain, and occasionally accompanied by light ning, while the spectator literally looks down upon the Form, perfectly secure from its effects. In Lord Byron's Diary for 1813, he says, "I have been thinking lately a good deal of Mary Duff. How very that I should have been so utterly, devotedly, fond of fat girl, at an age when I could neither feel passion, nor Yet since in danger courts abound, From snares may saints preserve you! And grant your love or friendship ne'er From any claim a kindred care, But those who best deserve you! Not for a moment may you stray O'er roses may your footsteps move, Oh! if you wish that happiness And though some trifling share of praise, To me were doubly dear; 43 1 know the meaning of the word! And the effect! My mother used always to rally me about this childish amour; and, at last, many years after, when I was sixteen, she told me one day: 'Oh, Byron, I have had a letter from Edin. burgh, from Miss Abercromby, and your old sweetheart, Mary Duff, is married to a Mr. Cockburn.' [Robert Cock. burn, Esq. of Edinburgh.] And what was my answer? really cannot explain or account for my feelings at that moment; but they nearly threw me into convulsions-to the horror of my mother, and the astonishment of every body. And it is a phenomenon in my existence (for I was not eight years old), which has puzzled, and will puzzle me to the latest hour of it."-Again, in January, 1815, a few days after his marriage, in a letter to his friend Captain Hay, the poet thus speaks of his childish attachment:-"Pray tell me more-or as much as you like, of your cousin Mary. I believe I told you our story some years ago. I was twenty. seven a few days ago, and I have never seen her since we were children, and young children too; but I never forget her, nor ever can. You will oblige me with presenting her with my best respects, and all good wishes. It may seem ridiculous-but it is at any rate, I hope, not offensive to her nor hers-in me to pretend to recollect any thing about her, at so early a period of both our lives, almost, if not quite, in our nurseries; but it was a pleasant dream, which she must pardon me for remembering. Is she pretty still? I have the most perfect idea of her person, as a child; but Time, I suppose has played the devil with us both.”—L. E. "Dante is said, as early as nine years old, to have fallen in love with Beatrice; Alfieri, who was himself precocious in the passion, considered such early sensibility to be an unerring sign of a soul formed for the fine arts; and Canova used to say that he was in love when but five years old." Galt.-P. E. Yet it could not be love, for I knew not the name,What passion can dwell in the heart of a child? But still I perceive an emotion the same As I felt, when a boy, on the crag-cover'd wild: One image alone on my bosom impress'd, I loved my bleak regions, nor panted for new; And few were my wants, for my wishes were bless'd; And pure were my thoughts, for my soul was with you. I arose with the dawn; with my dog as my guide, No dreams, save of Mary, were spread to my view; And warm to the skies my devotions arose, For the first of my prayers was a blessing on you. I left my bleak home, and my visions are gone; The mountains are vanish'd, my youth is no more; As the last of my race, I must wither alone, And delight but in days I have witness'd before: Ah! splendour has raised but embitter'd my lot; More dear were the scenes which my infancy knew: Though my hopes may have fail'd, yet they are not forgot; Though cold is, my heart, still it lingers with you. When I see some dark hill point its crest to the sky, I think of the rocks that o'ershadow Colbleen; (2) When I see the soft blue of a love-speaking eye, I think of those eyes that endear'd the rude scene; When, haply, some light-waving locks I behold, That faintly resemble my Mary's in hue, I think on the long flowing ringlets of gold, The locks that were sacred to beauty, and you. Yet the day may arrive when the mountains once more Ah! Mary, what home could be mine but with you? (I) The Dee is a beautiful river, which rises near Mar Lodge, and falls into the sea at New Aberdeen. (2) Colbleen is a mountain near the verge of the Highlands, not far from the ruins of Dee Castle. The (3) In the spring of 1807, on recovering from a severe illness, Lord Byron had projected a visit to Scotland. plan was not put into execution; but he thus adverts to it, in a letter dated in August, and addressed to his fair correspondent of Southwell :-"On Sunday, I set off for the Highlands. A friend of mine accompanies me in my carriage to Edinburgh. There we shall leave it, and proceed in a tandem through the western parts to Inverary, where we shall purchase shelties, to enable us to view places inaccessible to vehicular conveyances. On the coast we shall hire a vessel, and visit the most remarkable of the Hebrides, and, if we have time and favourable weather, mean to sail as far as Iceland, only three hundred miles from the northern extremity of Caledonia, to peep at Hecla. I mean to collect all the Erse traditions, poems, etc. etc. and translate, or expand the subject to fill a volume, which may appear next spring, under the denomination of The Highland Harp,' or some title equally picturesque. What would you say to some stanzas on Mount Hecla ? They would be written at least with fire."-L. E. (4) Sassenach, or Saxon, a Gaelic word, signifying either Lowland or English. (5) "The 'imagination all compact,' which the greatest I WOULD I WERE A CARELESS CHILD. And seeks the rocks where billows roll. Take back this name of splendid sound! I hate the touch of servile hands, I hate the slaves that cringe around. Place me along the rocks I love, Which sound to Ocean's wildest roar; I ask but this-again to rove Through scenes my youth hath known before. Few are my years, and yet I feel The world was ne'er design'd for me: A visionary scene of bliss: I loved-but those I loved are gone; When all its former hopes are dead! How dull! to hear the voice of those Whom rank or chance, whom wealth or power, Have made, though neither friends nor foes, Associates of the festive hour. Give me again a faithful few, In years and feelings still the same, Where boisterous joy is but a name. poet who ever lived has assigned as the distinguishing badge of his brethren, is in every case a dangerous gift. It exag gerates, indeed, our expectations, and can often bid its possessor hope, where hope is lost to reason: but the delusive pleasure arising from these visions of imagination resembles that of a child, whose notice is attracted by a fragment of glass to which a sun-beam has given momentary splendour. He hastens to the spot with breathless impa tience, and finds the object of his curiosity and expectation is equally vulgar and worthless. Such is the man of quick and exalted powers of imagination. His fancy over-estimates the object of his wishes, and pleasure, fame, distinction, are alternately pursued, attained, and despised when in his power. Like the enchanted fruit in the palace of a sorcerer, the objects of his admiration lose their attraction and value as soon as they are grasped by the adventurer's hand, and all that remains is regret for the time lost in the chase, and astonishment at the hallucination under which it was undertaken. The disproportion between hope and posses sion, which is felt by all men, is thus doubled to those ! whom nature has endowed with the power of gilding a distant prospect by the rays of imagination. These reflec tions, though trite and obvious, are in a manner forced from us by the poetry of Lord Byron,-by the sentiments of weariness of life and enmity with the world which they so frequently express, and by the singular analogy which such sentiments hold with well-known incidents of his life." Sir Walter Scott.-L. E. And woman, lovely woman! thou, This busy scene of splendid woe, Fain would I fly the haunts of men I seek to shun, not hate, mankind; My breast requires the sullen glen, Whose gloom may suit a darken'd mind. Oh! that to me the wings were given Which bear the turtle to her nest! Then would I cleave the vault of heaven, To flee away, and be at rest. (1) LINES WRITTEN BENEATH AN ELM IN THE CHURCHYARD OF HARROW. (2) SPOT of my youth! whose hoary branches sigh, Swept by the breeze that fans thy cloudless sky; Where now alone I muse, who oft have trod, With those I loved, thy soft and verdant sod; With those who, scatter'd far, perchance deplore, Like me, the happy scenes they knew before: Oh! as I trace again thy winding hill, Mine eyes admire, my heart adores thee still, Thou drooping Elm! beneath whose boughs I lay, And frequent mused the twilight hours away; (I)And I said, Oh! that I had wings like a dove, for then would I fly away, and be at rest."-Psalm Iv. 6. This verse also constitutes a part of the most beautiful anthem in our language. (2) On losing his natural daughter, Allegra, in April, 1822, Lord Byron sent her remains to be buried at Harrow, where," he says, in a letter to Mr. Murray "I once hoped to have laid my own." "There is," he adds, "a spot in the church-yard, near the footpath, on the brow of the hill looking towards Windsor, and a tomb under a large tree bearing the name of Peachie or Peachey), where I used to sit for hours and hours when a boy. This was my favourite spot; but, as I wish to erect a tablet to her memory, the body had better be deposited in the church," -and it was so accordingly.-L. E. Where, as they once were wont, my limbs recline, And seem to whisper, as they gently swell, When fate shall chill, at length, this fever'd breast, And calm its cares and passions into rest, Oft have I thought, 't would soothe my dying hour,— If aught may soothe when life resigns her power,To know some humbler grave, some narrow cell, Would hide my bosom where it loved to dwell; With this fond dream, methinks, 't were sweet to dieAnd here it linger'd, here my heart might lie; Here might I sleep where all my hopes arose, Scene of my youth, and couch of my repose; For ever stretch'd beneath this mantling shade, Press'd by the turf where once my childhood play'd; Wrapt by the soil that veils the spot I loved, Mix'd with the earth o'er which my footsteps moved; Blest by the tongues that charm'd my youthful ear, Mourn'd by the few my soul acknowledged here; Deplored by those in early days allied, And unremember'd by the world beside. September 2, 1807. [The "Lines written beneath an Elm at Harrow,” were the last in the little volume printed at Newark in 1807. The reader is referred to Mr. Moore's Life, for various interesting particulars respecting the impression produced on Lord Byron's mind by the celebrated Critique of his juvenile performances, put forth in the Edinburgh Review, a journal which, at that time, possessed nearly undivided influence and authority. The poet's diaries and letters afford evidence that, in his latter days, he considered this piece as the work of Mr. (now Lord) Brougham; but on what grounds he had come to that conclusion he no where mentions. It forms, however, from whatever pen it may have proceeded, so important a link in Lord Byron's literary history, that we insert it at length.-L. E.] CRITIQUE EXTRACTED FROM THE EDINBURGH REVIEW FOR JANUARY 1808. (1) HOURS OF IDLENESS; a Series of Poems, original and translated. By George Gordon, Lord Byron, a Minor. 8vo. pp. 200. Newark, 1807. THE poesy of this young lord belongs to the class which neither gods nor meu are said to permit. Indeed, we do not recollect to have seen a quantity of (1) This memorable criticism has been designated by Moore, as an article which, if not witty in itself, deserves eminently the credit of causing wit in others. Never, whilst the short but glorious race of Byron's genius is remembered, can the critic, whoever he may be, that so unintentionally ministered to its first start, be forgotten. The effect which the review produced upon the poet can with difficulty be conceived. A friend, who found him in the first moments of excitement after reading the article, inquired anxiously whether he verse with so few deviations in either direction from that exact standard. His effusions are spread over a dead flat, and can no more get above or below the level, than if they were so much stagnant water. As an extenuation of this offence, the noble author is peculiarly forward in pleading minority. We have it in the title-page, and on the very back of the volume; it had just received a challenge, not knowing how else to account for the fierce defiance of his looks. Among the less sentimental effects of the critique upon his mind, he used to mention that, on the day he read it, he drank three bottles of claret to his own share after dinner; --that nothing however relieved him till he had given vent to his indignation in rhyme, and that "after the first twenty lines he felt himself considerably better." -P.E. follows his name like a favourite part of his style. Much stress is laid upon it in the preface; and the poems are connected with this general statement of his case, by particular dates, substantiating the age at which each was written. Now the law upon the point of minority we hold to be perfectly clear. It is a plea available only to the defendant; no plaintiff can offer it as a supplementary ground of action. Thus, if any suit could be brought against Lord Byron, for the purpose of compelling him to put into court a certain quantity of poetry, and if judgment were given against him, it is highly probable that an exception would be taken, were he to deliver for poetry the contents of this volume. To this he might plead minority; but, as he now makes voluntary tender of the article, he hath no right to sue, on that ground, for the price in good current praise, should the goods be unmarketable. This is our view of the law on the point; and, we dare to say, so will it be ruled. Perhaps, however, in reality, all that he tells us about his youth is rather with a view to increase our wonder than to soften our censures. He possibly means to say, "See how a minor can write! This poem was actually composed by a young man of eighteen, and this by one of only sixteen!" But, alas! we all remember the poetry of Cowley at ten, and Pope at twelve; and so far from hearing, with any degree of surprise, that very poor verses were written by a youth from his leaving school to his leaving college, inclusive, we really believe this to be the most common of all occurrences; that it happens in the life of nine men in ten who are educated in England; and that the tenth man writes better verse than Lord Byron. His other plea of privilege our author rather brings forward in order to waive it. He certainly, however, does allude frequently to his family and ancestorssometimes in poetry, sometimes in notes; and, while giving up his claim on the score of rank, he takes care to remember us of Dr. Johnson's saying, that when a nobleman appears as an author, his merit should be handsomely acknowledged. In truth, it is this consideration only that induces us to give Lord Byron's poems a place in our review, beside our desire to counsel him, that he do forthwith abandon poetry, and turn his talents, which are considerable, and his opportunities, which are great, to better account. With this view, we must beg leave seriously to assure him, that the mere rhyming of the final syllable, even when accompanied by the presence of a certain number of feet,--nay, although (which does not always happen) those feet should scan regularly, and have been all counted accurately upon the fingers,-is not the whole art of poetry. We would entreat him to believe, that a certain portion of liveliness, somewhat of fancy, is necessary to constitute a poem ; and that a poem in the present day, to be read, must contain at least one thought, either in a little degree different from the ideas of former writers, or differently expressed. We put it to his candour, whether there is any thing so deserving the name of poetry in verses like the following, written in 1806; and whether, if a youth of eighteen could say any thing so uninteresting to his ancestors, a youth of nineteen should publish it : "Shades of heroes, farewell! your descendant, departing From the seat of his ancestors, bids you adieu! Abroad or at home, your remembrance imparting New courage, he'll think upon glory and you. "Though a tear dim his eye at this sad separation, "That fame, and that memory still will he cherish; When decay'd, may he mingle his dust with your own." Now, we positively do assert, that there is nothing better than these stanzas in the whole compass of the noble minor's volume. Lord Byron should also have a care of attempting what the greatest poets have done before him, for comparisons (as he must have had occasion to see at his writing-master's) are odious. Gray's Ode on Eton College should really have kept out the ten hobbling stanzas On a distant View of the Village and School of Harrow. "Where fancy yet joys to retrace the resemblance In like manner, the exquisite lines of Mr. Rogers, On a Tear, might have warned the noble author off those premises, and spared us a whole dozen such stanzas as the following: "Mild charity's glow, to us mortals below "The man doom'd to sail with the blast of the gale, As he bends o'er the wave, which may soon be his grave, And so of instances in which former poets had failed. Thus, we do not think Lord Byron was made for translating, during his nonage, Adrian's Address to his Soul, when Pope succeeded so indifferently in the attempt. If our readers, however, are of another opinion, they may look at it. "Ah! gentle, fleeting, wavering sprite, To what unknown region borne Wilt thou now wing thy distant flight? No more with wonted humour gay, But pallid, cheerless, and forlorn." However, be this as it may, we fear his translations and imitations are great favourites with Lord Byron. We have them of all kinds, from Anacreon to Ossian; and, viewing them as school exercises, they may pass. Only, why print them after they have had their day and served their turn? And why call the thing in p. 79(1) a translation, where two words (062 λtyuv) of the original are expanded into four lines, and the other thing in p. 81,(2) where Herovuxriots mod apars is rendered by means of six hobbling verses? As to his Ossianic poesy, we are not very good judges, being, in truth, so moderately skilled in that species of composition, that we should, in all probability, be criticising some bit of the genuine Macpherson itself, were we to express our opinion of Lord Byron's rhapsodies. If, then, the following beginning of a Song of Bards is by his lordship, we venture to object to it, as far as we can comprehend it:-" What form rises on the roar of clouds, whose dark ghost gleams on the red stream of tempests? His voice rolls on the thunder; 'tis Orla, After the brown chief of Oithona. He was," etc. detaining this "brown chief" some time, the bards conclude by giving him their advice to raise his fair locks;" then to “spread them on the arch of the rainbow;" and "to smile through the tears of the storm." Of this kind of thing there are no less than nine pages; and we can so far venture an opinion in their favour, that they look very like Macpherson; and we are positive they are pretty nearly as stupid and tire some. It is a sort of privilege of poets to be egotists; but they should use it as not abusing it ;" and particularly one who piques himself (though indeed at the ripe age of nineteen) on being "an infant bard," ("The artless Helicon I boast is youth")-should either not know, or should seem not to know, so much about his own ancestry. Besides a poem above cited, on the family-seat of the Byrons, we have another of eleven pages, on the self-same subject, introduced with an apology, "he certainly had no intention of inserting it," but really "the particular request of some friends," etc. etc. It concludes with five stanzas on himself, the "last and youngest of a noble line." There is a good deal also about his maternal ancestors, in a poem on Lachin y Gair, a mountain where he spent part of his youth, and might have learnt that pibroch is not a bagpipe, any more than duet means a fiddle. As the author has dedicated so large a part of his volume to immortalise his employments at school and college, we cannot possibly dismiss it without pre:senting the reader with a specimen of these ingenious effusions. In an ode with a Greek motto, called Granta, we have the following magnificent stanzas: "There, in apartments small and damp, "Who reads false quantities in Seale, Or puzzles o'er the deep triangle, The Monthly Reviewers, in those days the next in circulation to the Edinburgh, gave a much more favourable notice of the Hours of Idleness. "These compositions (said they are generally of a plaintive or an amatory cast, with an occasional mixture of satire; and they display both ease and strength-both pathos and fire. It will be expected that marks of juvenility and of haste should be discovered in these productions; and we seriously advise our young bard to fulfil with submissive perseverance the duties of revision and correction. We discern, in Lord Byron, a degree of mental power, and a turn of mental disposition, which render us solicitous that both should be well culti vated and wisely directed, in his career of life. He has received talents, and is accountable for the use of them. We trust that he will render them beneficial to man, and a source of real gratification to himself in declining age. Then may he properly exclaim with the Roman orator, Non lubet mihi deplorare vitam, quod multi, et ii docti, sepe fecerant; neque me vixisse pœnitet: quoniam ita vixi, at non frustra me natum existimem.'"-Lord Byron repaid the Edinburgh Critique with a Satire-and became himself Monthly Reviewer.— L. E. There may be much temerity in the avowal, but we have ever been among the number of those who regarded the dawning of Byron's powers, displayed in the Hours of Idlesem, as by no means indicative of the dazzling splendour of his subsequent poetical career. There was no extraor dinary brilliancy in his juvenile efforts; and though the tree its maturity bore goodly fruit, notwithstanding the in different promise of its earlier blossoms, the circumstance Deprived of many a wholesome meal, In barbarous Latin doom'd to wrangle: "Renouncing every pleasing page, From authors of historic use, Preferring to the letter'd sage The square of the hypothenuse. "Still harmless are these occupations, That hurt none but the hapless student, Compared with other recreations, Which bring together the imprudent." lege psalmody as is contained in the following Attic We are sorry to hear so bad an account of the colstanzas:— "Our choir would scarcely be excused To such a set of croaking sinners. Had heard these blockheads sing before him, In furious mood he would have tore 'em!" But, whatever judgment may be passed on the poems of this noble minor, it seems we must take them as we find them, and be content; for they are the last we shall ever have from him. He is, at best, he says, but an intruder into the groves of Parnassus: he never lived in a garret, like thorough-bred poets; and "though he once roved a careless mountaineer in the Highlands of Scotland," he has not of late enjoyed this advantage. Moreover, he expects no profit from his publication; and, whether it succeeds or not, "it is highly improbable, from his situation and pursuits hereafter," that he should again condescend to become an author. Therefore, let us take what we get, and be thankful. What right have we poor devils to be nice? We are well off to have got so much from a man of this lord's station, who does not live in a garret, but "has the sway" of Newstead Abbey. Again, we let us be thankful; and, with honest Sancho, bid God bless the giver, nor look the gift horse in the mouth. (1) say, must be considered an unusual and a felicitous exception, by no means disproving the plain rule. If the sublimity and the success of the poet's later career have completely belied the sinister predictions of the Edinburgh Reviewers, the only fair inference to be drawn is, that an unerring judgment can as little be founded on early mediocrity, as on precocious genius: the one is not always the harbinger of future in feriority, nor the other the precursor of matured excellence. Judging strictly with reference to the evidence before them, Byron's reviewers were not unjust, though their severity might have been tempered with more courtesy, and modified by a kindly hope for the future- a hope which more indulgent critics entertained, from the consideration of the poet's youth, and of the redeeming traits occasionally apparent in the juvenile poems "brought up for judgment." Such, we think, must be the impression made by a perusal of the Hours of Idleness on every reader unprejudiced by the gigantic fame of Byron, and such is the opinion pronounced by one of his warmest admirers and most eloquent apologists, Moore himself, from whom we quote the following passage:-"It is but justice to remark, without at the same time intending any excuse for the contemptuous tone of criticism assumed by the reviewer, that the early verses of Lord Byron, however distinguished by tenderness and grace, give but little promise of those dazzling miracles of poesy with which he afterwards astonished and enchanted the world; and that if his youthful verses now have a peculiar charm in our eyes, it is because we read them, as it were, by the light of his subsequent glory."— P. E. |