声

The corrupt

sympathy with mankind, neither does
he seem to us to have had any love
of truth. He appears to have felt
that we have a natural tendency to-
wards admiring and feeling, in ac-
cordance with the show of bold and
bad predominances.
vanity of men, the propensity which
teaches them to revere Cromwell
and worship Napoleon, has made the
world derive a diseased gratification
from the pictures of Harald and
Conrad. But these latter persouages
are essentially untrue. All that
gives them more of the heroic and
romantic character than the former
worthies, is superadded to the origi-
nal basis of evil and worthlessness,
and is utterly inconsistent with it.
And this Lord Byron must have
known. He who put together these
monsters, must have been aware that
they are as false, and, to a philoso-
pher, as ridiculous as sphynxes, or
chimeras to a naturalist. But he had
so little love of truth, that he could
not resist the temptation of encir
cling himself with these bombastic
absurdities, to raise the astonishment
of sentimental mantua-makers.

own minds, not frame-works for human conceptions and affections, but mere images of his own personality, and vantage-grounds on which to raise himself afar from and above mankind? Would he not say that he had been imbibing discontent, disgust, satiety, and learning to look upon life as a dreary dulness, relieved only by betaking ourselves to the wildest excesses and fiercest intensity of evil impulse. If, as we firmly believe, a sincere observer of himself would give us this account of his own feelings, after communing with the poetry of Byron, the question as to its beneficial or even innocent tendency is at an end. It is true that there are in man higher powers than those which tend directly to action; and there may be a character of a very exalted kind, though not the most perfect, which would withdraw itself from the business of society, and from the task of forwarding the culture of its generation, to contemplate with serene and grateful awe the perfect glory of the creation. But this is not the species of superiority to those around us and independence of them, which is fostered It is mournful to see that so much by the works of Lord Byron. The of energy and real feeling should feeling which runs through them is have been perverted to the formathat of a self-consuming scorn, and a tion of these exaggerated beings, self-exhausting weariness, as remote alternately so virtuous and so vias can be from the healthful and ma- cious, now so overflowing with tenjestic repose of philosophic medita- derness, and so bright with purity, tion, as different from it as is the and again so hard, and vile, and noisome glare of a theatre from that atrocious. These qualities, to be ridnight firmament which folds the sure, are all found in man; but the world in a starry atmosphere of reli- combination, where, in earth or gion; while the practical portion of moon, shall we look to find it? The our nature is displayed in his writ- principles of human nature are not ings, as only active and vigorous mere toys, like phosphorus and amid the atrocities or the vileness of paint, wherewith to eke out goblins: the foulest passions. He saw in and he who pretends to exalt the mankind not a being to be loved, but mind by representing it as superior, to be despised; and despised, not not only to its meaner necessities, for vice, ignorance, insensibility, or but to its best affections, in truth, deselfishness, but because he is obliged, grades it to the basest of uses, by exby a law of his being, to look up to hibiting it, not as a thing to be reversome power above himself; because enced, and loved, and studied with he is not self-created and self-exist- conscientious and scrutinizing reflecing, nor "himself, his world, and his tion, but as a dead and worthless own God." material, which he may pound and As the Lord Byron of "Childe compound-evaporate into a cloud, Harold" and "Don Juan" had no or analyse into a caput mortuum,

and subject to all the metamorphoses which are worked by the lath wand of a conjuror. It is only by attributing the favourite thoughts and deeds of his writings to personages whom we feel throughout, though we may not realise the consciousness, to be essentially different from our selves, that he could, for a moment, beguile us into conceiving libertinism sublime, and malignity amiable; and, if mankind were so educated as to know the constitution of their own souls, if they had learned to reflect more and to remember less, they would never be deluded into sympa thy with phantoms as unsubstantial and inconsistent as the Minotaur, the Scylla, the Harpies, and the Cyclops of fable, the Anthropophagi, and men whose heads

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"Do grow beneath their shoulders."

We entirely omit the question of the direct irreligion and indecency of his writings. As to these matters, those who feel religiously will blame him, without our assistance, and those who approve of infidelity, or gloat over obscurity, will applaud, in spite of us. At present, we neither seek to heighten the reprobation, nor to diminish aught from the approval. For ourselves, we lament the Anti-Christian and impure tendencies of his mind, not so much for any positive evil they can do,-this, we suspect, being much over-rated, -as because they are evidences of the degradation of a powerful mind, and of the pollution of much and strong good feeling. We certainly differ considerably from the greater number of those who have attacked him, as to the particular parts of his writings, which merit the severest condemnation. The story of Haidee seems to us much less mischievous than that of Donna Julia, and this far more endurable than the amour with Catherine. "Childe Harold" will do more harm than "Cain," and either of them more than the parody of "The Vision of Judgment." Of this, also, we are sure, that, had he never openly outraged public opinion by direct blas

phemies and grossness, the world would have been well enough content to receive his falsifications of human nature for genuine; and all his forced contortions, and elaborate agonies, would have passed current as natural manifestations of a rea sonable and pretty despair. But, when he once did violence to those names which are the idols of the age, while the spirit of religion is wanting, he became a mark for the condemnation of those who live by the service of Bel and Dagon. He might exhibit man as a wretched and contemptible, an utterly hopeless and irrecoverably erring creature,he might represent selfishness and vanity as the true glories of our nature, he might leave us no home but solitude, and no stay but sensuali ty, and deny not only God, but good-and yet be the favourite of pi ous Reviewers, the drawing-room autocrat, the boudoir deity. But when he once dared to doubt, in so many words, of the wisdom of Providence, and, instead of hinting adultery, to name fornication, the morality of a righteous generation rose up in arms against him; and those who ought long before to have wept over the prostitution of such a mind, affected a new-born horror at the event, though they had been delighting for years in the reality of the pollution,

We wish not to deny that Lord Byron was a poet, and a great one. There are moods of the mind which he has delineated with remarkable fidelity. But, as Shakspeare would not have been what he is, had he exhibited only the fantastic way. wardness of Hamlet, or the passionate love of Romeo, so Byron is less than a first-rate poet for the uni formity with which he has displayed that intense self-consciousness, and desperate indifference, which he has undoubtedly embodied more completely than any other English writ er.

The sceptre of his power is, indeed, girt with the wings of an angel, but it is also wreathed with earth-born serpents; and, while we admire 'we must sigh, and shudder while we bow.

TO MEET AGAIN.

To meet again! O, that a cruel fate

Should have compelled us now, and thus, to part! I feel as if the world lay desolate

For me; a burden presses on my heart;

In vain I strive to ease my breast, in vain

Life's sole hope is, that we may meet again!

To meet again! that is the one lone ray,

Which from the blackness of this midnight streams;
Cut off from thee, day shall crawl on to day,
And thou be present only in my dreams;

I gaze around me in my spirit's dearth,
To know that nought like thee abides on earth!

I pine in solitude-I muse upon

The days, that, meteor-like, have glided by,
When blessing my rapt sight thy beauty shone,
And my heart thrill'd beneath thy conquering eye,
And when the music of thy deep, rich voice
Taught all my thoughts to sadden, yet rejoice.

Methinks I see thee, in thy green retreat,

Watering the glow of the flush'd summer flowers; Or, while the streamlet murmurs at thy feet,

Sitting with some loved book 'mid sylvan bowers,
And lending to the groves, and fields, and skies,
More lustrous beauty from thy soft blue eyes ;-

Ah! changing, like our fortunes, wilt thou change,
Smile with the gay, and with the giddy turn?
Forbid the thought! Could Time thy heart estrange,
Less for the love of thee this heart should burn;
But if on earth Fidelity may find

A home for rest, 'tis in thy noble mind!

Yes! I will live in hope-it cannot be

(-Oh, if it should, before that hateful day,

May death and welcome-set my spirit free-)
That thou from cherish'd ties should'st turn away;

No! Nature never could be so unkind,

As link, with form so fair, a fickle mind!

I'll think of thee, I'll think, when joy would come
To raise my lonely and desponding heart;
I'll think of thee, beloved, in hours of gloom,
And happy feel that thou hast not a part
In my afflictions.-Oh! without a cloud,
May all thy days shine o'er in lustre proud.

May a perpetual sunshine still illume

Thy every thought-and not a woe or care
From thy soft cheek of beauty rob the bloom,

Or dim the silken richness of thy hair;

And when sweet sleep comes o'er thee, oh, be bright
Thy sinless dreams with a celestial light!

None in the world like thee! oh, there are none-
Or, if there were, my heart desires them not;
Flower of life's wilderness! my chosen one!
The bright, the beautiful, the unforgot,
I murmur thy dear name, and, day by day,
Yield me more deeply to Dejection's sway.

None in the world like thee! oh everywhere
I miss thee, where of yore I sought and found;
Fairest, at all times, never half so fair

As now, when for thy form I gaze around
In vain and feel that I am quite alone-
That life is pleasureless-and thou art gone!

None in the world like thee! for me the spring
Vainly puts forth its buds and bells; I hear
The lark ascending on its summer wing,

But its sweet music palls upon my ear;

Blue skies o'erarch green earth, which smileth glad ;
The streams make music-yet my heart is sad.

None in the world like thee! I look around
In vain to find thy likeness; thou wert given
To sanctify my soul, and from the ground

Exalt my low thoughts, telling them of heaven;
For paltry were the heart, which, loving thee,
Could faithless, sinful, or degraded be.

I cannot sleep-when beats the heavy rain,
And the winds murmur through the midnight deep,
I toss upon my couch, and turn in vain ;

The past crowds on my thoughts-I cannot sleep;
And doubly dear thou art, and doubly fair,

With thy calm brow, deep eyes, and sunny hair ;—

And then thy voice-I list it in my dreams-
It haunts my memory with its angel tones,
Till my heart bleeds; to it all music seems
A tuneless discord, which mine ear disowns;
I hear it in the silence of my thought,
A rich, sad melody, by memory brought.

Yes! I will walk in firmness-I will shake

The world's pollutions from my thoughts, and be
More just, more pure, more upright, for thy sake,
More true to heaven, and less unworthy thee:
Mourn o'er the past, and for the future prove
As one whose conduct would secure thy love!

And I will fly temptation-I will keep
My heart in separation from all ill,

For thou wilt come to me at midnight deep,

In holiest dreams, my troubled heart to still;

And thou wilt chase my fears, and cheer my gloom,
By pointing forth to happier days to come!

To meet again!-without this hope, for me

Death would be more than welcome; for life seems The flowerless desert, and the shoreless sea,

Of which the melancholy madman dreams, When not a ray of hope beams, shooting fair Through the grey mists of his forlorn despair.

To meet again!-till then a sad adieu !———

With thee all joy and comfort disappears, And life grows dark and clouded on my view :

Farewell! While wandering through this vale of tears,

This one dear hope my spirit shall sustain,

That we may meet again-may meet again!

THE CONDITION OF THE IRISH POOR.

A LETTER TO A MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT FROM A FRIEND IN IRELAND.