vernment that it has since enjoyed. Something similar may be traced in other conntries, arising from the relation in which the Clergy stand to the great body of the community.

The author draws some forcible illustrations of his doctrine relative to the humanizing influence of Christianity from the history of the French Revolution, when the religion of Christ was abjured, and all its tender mercies were despised. Not only was the number of executions such as to exhibit rather a massacre than a judicial infliction of punishment, but the punishments were often of such a nature as to harrow the soul: modes of exquisite torture were devised, and every method by which death could be rendered more dreadful was resorted to with infuriated delight. This, no doubt, must be in part attributed to the violent excitement of civil dissention; but it is no less evident that if the principal actors in these dismal scenes had been under the influence of the Christian religion, or had the Government adhered to the maxims which, through that religion, had in other states been incorporated with criminal jurisprudence, such atrocities as were witnessed would never have stained the annals of France. Accordingly, upon the return to those sound principles by which the European commonwealth had been governed, the punishments detailed in the early records of the Revolution were abolished, with many others which had continued to disgrace the administration of the former dynasty.

We have already given our opinion so freely of this General and Historical Account of Christianity, that it seems unnecessary for us to repeat that its great defect as a literary performance is the want of originality. The matter is good, and the composition is sufficiently agreeable; but then the matter is all to be found in other very common books, and a considerable portion of it is at least as neatly dressed up in the pages of Dr. Campbell and Principal Hill. Dr. Cook could not, we imagine, have seen the work of the last named author before he printed his own; a circumstance which renders it somewhat difficult to account for the striking coincidences in thought, style, opinion, and even authorities, which may be traced between the volumes of the Principal and in those now before us.

We esteem Dr. Cook as a candid, modest, and amiable writer, as a man of competent learning, and commendable industry; as an author, in short, from whom the world is entitled to expect something that will keep his name alive "among the posterities," and secure him a place by the side VOL. XIX. MARCH, 1823.

R

of his countrymen Hume, Robertson, Henry; and Gillies. Why, then, does he publish so fast? Why should he run to the press with a book that any body could compile and arrange almost as well as he has done it! He has been guilty of a gross mistake, disappointed himself, disappointed his friends, disappointed the public, and grievously disappointed the British Critics who would have had pleasure in praising him.

ART. II. Werner, a Tragedy. By Lord Byron. Murray. 1823.

ART. III. Ruitzner; or, the German's Tale. By Harriet Lee. 5th Edition. Murray. 1823.

WITHOUT any question Lord Byron is a very extraordinary man. For a long time we hesitated upon his claims, but at length we are forced to accede to the opinion of his admirers, and to acknowledge that his conduct, his genius, and his learning, entitle him to a conspicuous place amongst the moral phænomena of the age. Indeed, with the excep tion of the honest Mr. William Cobbett, we know no one, neither man, woman or child, pig, bonassus, or mermaid, who has such a good right to be deemed and taken for an unaccountable and wonderful thing as Lord Byron himself. Cobbett is his superior certainly; but Lord Byron is too sagacious in discovering merit, and too liberal in recognizing it when known, not to be well content to follow in the splendid wake of that great and discursive statesman. To blow hot and cold from every point in the compass, to praise and abuse respectively republics and monarchies, monarchies and republics; to libel and flatter England and America, Buonaparte and Thomas Paine, the king and the people, friends and enemies, men and women, truth and justice, backwards and forwards ten times over; to do all this without any excuse or bashfulness within the continent of one work, is really at once a symptom, a proof, and a consequence of an order of intellect, which we have no adequate terms to describe. Lord Byron's exertions, though very great considered per se, are yet much below Mr. William Cobbett's; because though to call Mr. Brougham an incendiary, and to write Marino Faliero, to reprehend Mr. Moore's immoralities, and to distil Don Juan canto after canto through the press, to calumniate his own relations, and to indite verses to their memory, to scream for liberty and to live in slavery, to despise the exile of Elba, and to

crouch to and flatter the exile of St. Helena-though these be great and remarkable efforts of mind, yet there are two facts connected with them which immediately diminish their relative importance, and reduce Lord Byron to a respectful and pupil-like distance from the aforesaid honest Mr. Cobbett. In the first place the Political Register contains within itself the above-mentioned diversities of opinion; whereas the variantes of Lord Byron are scattered confusedly through eight or nine years, and about twice as many volumes; and secondly, Cobbett daily persuades thousands of his discreet countrymen to adopt his advise in pleno comitatu upon the most vital interests of themselves and their country; while no man blest by Providence with an ordinary share of human apprehension will take Lord Byron's judgment or asseveration upon which way the wind blew when his Lordship left Venice. In short, Cobbett has turned round and round, is still turning round and round, and will for ever turn round and round-and yet Cobbett preserves his reputation and influence unimpaired; Lord Byron has twisted round and round, is still twisting round and round, and will for ever twist round and round-but Lord Byron's influence is gone, his country in general loathes or disregards him, and his few remaining accomplices are áshamed of his connection!

Lord Byron has ceased to be dangerous; he is beginning to be ridiculous. He has ever wished to have it believed that he was a being of superior power, and gifted with unusual discrimination of the designs and characters of other men; he cared not if this reputation were purchased at the price of truth or justice; these last were well enough no doubt, but penetration quocumque modo, penetration was his object. Lord Byron actually had this reputation whilst he was a young man, and the want of it might have been excused; now that he has advanced into staid and middle life, and folly is not so venial, he has been tickled, as a river poacher tickles a fish, has suffered a noose to be put quietly and snugly round his neck, and if he attempts to retreat or diverge, will have a hook run through his nose, and be dragged on shore at the tender mercy of his freebooting comrade. Lord Byron is the dupe of Leigh Hunt; the Aristocratico-democrat is the tame hackney scrivener of the jacobinico-radical; the macaroni simperer on the patrician properties of long fingers is linked hand in hand with the mutton fist of the sometime tenant of a gaol; and an English peer vends blasphemy and sedition to buy bread and butter for London beggars. We have heard of the enno

bling of plebeians; if this be not an instance of the plebification of nobility, we suppose such a thing cannot exist.

We remember being much amused two or three years ago with a pamphlet entitled (we think) "The Book of Wonders," in which some waggish friend of Cobbett's, in order more fully and as it were palpably to demonstrate the luxuriant diversatility of that Political Register's mind and conduct, had collated in two narrow parallel columns sundry of his pros and cons upon men and measures. Thus :

"Sir F. Burdett is a man who is every man's friend. He bears the stamp of honesty upon his face. I would trust him with untold gold. He is your man!" Polit. Reg. 1817.

"Sir F. Burdett is a man who loves to tyrannize. He carries contempt and meanness upon the bridge of his nose. No man of common prudence would ad. mit him inside his doors." Polit. Reg. 1819.

Why does not the Examiner examine the works of Lord Byron for a similar purpose? As striking, if not as amusing, a Book of Wonders might easily be compiled from the works of his companion. For a very recent instance take the following. In January, 1822, Lord Byron utters an oracular sentence that without a strict observance of the unities there may be poetry, but there cannot be any drama; this, he adds, is acknowledged in all the more civilized parts of Europe, and accordingly he writes two plays expressly to demonstrate and adorn this profound assertion. With the real weight of the position itself we have at present nothing to do; we quarrel with no man for thinking that Cinna and Phere are more dramatic than Lear or Othello; upon such an occasion we hold it at once pacific and philosophical to prevent any discussion by that wise maxim, de gustibus non est disputandum. But the curious thing is that in November, 1822; just ten months after, the same Lord Byron writes another play, which he explicitly denominates a tragedy; the said tragedy cannot be dramatic in any sense by its author's own decision, because every unity is violated in every page it contains; it is moreover dedicated to Goethe, who is thereupon called "Illustrious," and is in reality the most audacious despiser and destroyer of all unities and almost all order; in addition to all which, not only is there no drama in it, but no poetry at all;-for Werner, the tragedy, of which we have been speaking, is literally and truly written in prose!

Some years back it would have been superfluous to have given any account of a book of Lord Byron's, which

had been published two or three months; but now when the times are altered, and nobody or next to nobody reads or asks for Lord Byron, it is necessary to go through the unpleasant task of taking some notice of the substance of his compositions. The present is one of the most curious we have seen, and the novelty of the attempt at a prose Unitarian Tragedy (prosy his former ones were) imparts a faint interest to Werner, which in susceptible minds amounts almost to curiosity. The exact nature of this attempt should be well understood; the story, characters, and leading conversations are openly plundered from Ruitzner, a good Canterbury Tale in tolerable English prose; and the originality of Lord Byron consists in this, that whereas others have usually translated verse into prose, or prose into verse, his Lordship hath conceived and most successfully realized his conception of the possibility of translating prose into prose.

It is true that Mr. Murray has printed Werner, as if it were poetry; but this was a natural mistake, for as many, if not all Lord Byron's former works were poetry either good, bad, or indifferent, it was easy for his publisher amongst his many other avocations to take it for granted that Werner was also a poem, and so to give directions for impressing it accordingly. If this be really the case, and Mr. Murray has given a more valuable consideration for Werner as poetry than he would have given for it as prose, we should be of opinion that he has his remedy upon an assumpsit, and that a jury de medietate of publishers and authors would assess the true quantum which Lord Byron in the present case deserved to have; or perhaps upon an application to the Lord Chancellor a decree for specific performance of the implied contract might be obtained, and then Lord Byron, unless he chose to lie in contempt of court, would be compelled to translate Werner into poetry. But this by the way.

Werner and Josephine, have a long conversation in a ruined apartment of a Castle in Silesia; they talk about their son, and Josephine hopes he is even then upholding Werner's rights to the title and estate of Count Siegendorf.

"WERNER.

"Tis hopeless, since his strange disappearance from my father's, entailing, as it were, my sins upon himself, no tidings have revealed I parted with him to his grandsire, on the promise that his anger should stop short of the third generation; but

his course.