years, Lord Byron again saw the Morea, I which he loved so well

"The sun, the sky, but not the slave the same." The reckless greediness of the Suliote refugees at Cephalonia disgusted him; and the intelligence he received about the prospects of liberty in Greece, or the probability of assistance from the Western Powers, so long withheld, being far from encouraging, he determined to remain some time at Cephalonia, but preferred living on board to accepting the warmly proffered hospitality of Colonel Charles Napier, or of the other residents in the island.

the immature judgment and the vehement sensation of his character; the verse flows onward in a torrent of splendor, and a false lustre is given to the passion whose fruit is ashes; beauty of form, and the easy and over-valued achievements of physical courage, are the artless and ordinary attractions of his actors; there is no depth or refinement of character, no difficult invention; the poems are but pictures of ordinary merit, in splendid

interest, for Mr. Trelawny's name has
become historical in Gordon's "History
of the Greek Revolution." His adven-
tures are not common-place; and his
intimate connection with the family and
fortunes of Odysseus afforded an oppor
tunity of seeing and knowing more of the
wilder and worthier elements of Romaic
character than has fallen to the lot of any
other educated Englishman. For some
time he held watch and ward in the forti-
fied, inaccessible cave on Mount Par-frames.
nassus, where Odysseus had placed his
family and property, with a garrison of a
few men, and his brother-in-law, Mr. Tre-
lawny, in command. He was at last des-
perately wounded in a very treacherous
manner, by a Scotchman named Fenton,
whom he had unduly trusted, but who
had been bribed to act as a spy on Odys-
seus and himself. He tells his story,
regardless of criticism, in a frank and
candid manner; and it must be a capi-
tious critic indeed, who can object to the
consciousness of that superior physical
strength and vigor, which sustained with
ease, exertions that exhausted the more
delicate powers of the two celebrated
companions, whose names lend so much
interest to his book, and to whose intel-
lectual preeminence he renders respect-
ful and affectionate homage.

We have so recently recorded our opinions on Shelley's writings,* that we shall now offer a few remarks on some portion of Lord Byron's poetry, which, with all it popularity, has not, it appears to us, been always rightly estimated. He unaffectedly repudiated the opinion so generally entertained, that he was the hero of his own compositions-that the monotonous protagonists of his early and brilliantly successful Eastern tales, no less than the blasé and reflective "Childe," or the fortunate and brilliant "Don Juan," were drawn from the inspiration of a too partial egotism. We are inclined to believe in the sincerity of his protest, and to attribute to dramatic poverty the uniformity of his characters, and to his own physical imperfection the bodily strength and activity by which his heroes are so generally distinguished. In those short pieces which were the fruits of his early travels, and which at once attractd the attention of every reader by the unequaled brilliancy of the language, we perceive

*Vide Number for January of this year.

But a deeper knowledge dawned upon. him a larger experience of his own heart, though little of the actual world from which he shrunk; and if he, as most men have done, regretted the delusions of the master-passion, and wished that the deception had lasted forever, or had never existed, yet his later strains, in their deeper tone and wider sympathies, evince that better self-knowledge, without which no man has successfully mapped even the narrowest province of the human heart; for that knowledge is itself but the evidence and the record of sufferings which the conflicts of reason with passion must ever produce.

In the crude though not inharmonious products of his youth, we see how little he had felt his strength, and how he was fettered by the rules which had been the guide of his model and antithesis, Pope; no where does he dare to be original, and the spirit which dictated his first and weakest satire, was but the natural resentment of an Englishman who had no mind to be bullied: the mere mechanical versification gives small promise of the matchless powers which produced "Don Juan" and " Beppo ;" and in the matter, there is nothing to warn us of that contemplative and deeply poetical thought which is so apparent in the "Prophecy of Dante," and in the two later cantos of "Childe Harold." Even those unequaled satiric powers which culminated in the "Irish Avatar," are but shadowed, not developed, and the common-place abuse and halfaffected contempt of his first satire are calculated to produce a very different effect from the withering ridicule and careless contempt which overwhelmed those who provoked the displeasure of his later years.

The German critics, with a severity of taste that does them honor, place the three great poets, whose names at once occur to us Homer, Shakspeare, and

His spirit had wrestled with itself in vain; the vehement and unwise desire for something denied to mere mortality was his; the self-condemnation of performance so grievously inadequate to the lofty resolution, which more or less dwells in every heart, rebelling against the sway of low desires, was strong upon him; so that he hated life, and sought at first wildly, but afterwards more calmly, to give that feeling utterance: but the "voiceless thought" could not so be spoken, and he, the most eloquent, went to his grave without succeeding in the vain effort to unburden his full heart. Not by words, however eloquent, can man satisfy himself, or vindicate his life to others. Consistent action alone can satisfy the conscience, or justify us to our own hearts; and when action is denied or unsought, we strive for the relief, however inadequate, that words can furnish. Thus Chaucer:

Goethe-so far above all rivalry, as to ac- | considered, is the only true religion, and cord to these alone that supremacy and a scorn, as strongly expressed, for the universality of intellect which we call vulgar or tinsel idols of mob idolatry. poetic genius; and this may be just, but the human mind is so constituted in its appreciation of poetry, as sometimes to derive superior pleasure from strains which have emanated from minds of far inferior order. We like best that poetry which addresses most strongly and directly the prevailing sentiments of our own characters; and hence thousands in whom the finest of Homer's rhapsodies, Shakspeare's "Tempest," or Goethe's "Iphigenia," would awake no other sentiment than cool admiration, would be moved to tears or to enthusiasm by Pindar, Campbell, or Gray. It is no less certain that men of even the keenest intellect merely, are not unfrequently deficient in poetic taste and judgment. We know, for example, that Napoleon preferred Ossian, and Robert Hall Virgil to Homer; and that Lord Byron himself, utterly wanting in dramatic power, but little appreciated the true strength of Shakspeare. Poetry, indeed, especially of the first order, must be felt in the heart as well as judged by the head, and the greatest merit is least apparent to a superficial glance; long study, contemplation, and comparison are required to comprehend the consummate excellence of a masterpiece, whether it be from the hand of Shakspeare or the pencil of Raphael.

But if the very few of the first order of poets completely satisfy all the requirements of the most refined and matured intellect, the poetry of Lord Byron will always appeal strongly to those, and they are not a few, whose passions, at some period of their lives, have proved too strong for the control of reason, and where regret, if not remorse, has followed the fruitless contest-a contest which has left the mind vacant for want of strong excitement, and wearied with a scene which offers no sufficient substitute for what has been lost. Flashes of the melancholy wisdom which follows on such experience are frequent in his later works, and their deep, and perhaps not barren truth, may sink with something of a healing and enlightening influence into hearts whose scars are not yet callous.

There is, too, a strong and ardent reverence for the nobleness of intellect, ever felt most strongly by those most highly endowed; that reverence which, rightly

"For when we may not do, then will we spe-
ken,
And in our ashen colde, is fire yreken."

Had any suitable career of action been open to him, or had he lived in feudal times, he might have surpassed Bertrand de Born in thirst for irregular warlike achievement, and in the strains that celebrated it; the monotony of a modern military career, and the subordination which can recognize no superiority but professional rank, where the opportunity of achievement is an accident, and routine the rule of life, was utterly unsuited to his character and his physical constitution. No better career offered to him than that miserable one of Missolonghi, and here he gave evidence of a moderation and self-command little to have been expected from a man whose vanity and egotism were not less conspicuous than his genius; this desire for an active career is translated into his Eastern stories, and his heroes are rather models of what he wished to be, than what he was.

His forte, however, as he knew, was vivid description, varied and illuminated by flashes of earnest thought, and the results of a melancholy, if a short experience.

In sustained dramatic or epic power

he was deficient; but this is an imperial endowment, and, in his own language,

est of all, the tyrant Zeus, was inferior. Like some vulgar earthly ruler, he uses his power but to gratify passions unworthy of a God-and the charm of divine beauty and celestial grace which hovers forever round the name of Aphrodite, is insufficient to overcome the disgust with which we regard her threat to Helena, when the latter indignantly refuses to return to her vanquished and fugitive paramour.

"Not Hellas could unroll From her Olympiads two such names." His "Manfred," despite Mr. Moore's crude criticism, is a dramatic failure; and when he calls this creation of Lord Byron's "loftier and worse" than Milton's Satan, the critic shows how little of the dramatic or epic element he must have himself possessed. "Manfred" is And when, in the "Tempest," Shaknot a great creation-he is but a dream-speare introduces Ariel to delude and torer, who, finding no pleasure in an earthly ment a set of drunken menials, or frightpursuit, itself a morbid and unhealthy en a brutal and ignorant drudge, he feeling, strives to o'erpass the limits of mortality, and to coërce the spirits whom the elements obey. Such a desire, as common as it was vain, before men had emerged from the superstitious element of the middle ages, evinces no elevation or greatness of character, and if with dauntless courage he defies the spirits whom he had evoked by his spells, and provoked by his contempt of their power, he does so as one who knows they can not injure him, and who seeks death rather than shuns it.

scarcely redeems the character of that "dainty" creation by his services in reconstructing the shattered ship, or even in deceiving the wretches who were plotting the death of the Duke. An inspired genius may walk through proprieties at will, as he so constantly does, but even Shakspeare might have remembered in the "Tempest," "Nec Deus intersit," etc.

When Goethe, following the popular superstition, introduces the Devil, thinly disguised, as the companion and mentor of Faust, he goes easily enough with the pair through the temptations and the punishment of his neophyte and of Margaret-an episode too common in daily life to require the devil as its agent

The great blot of the piece, however, is the doubt that encompasses the fate of Astarte; the imagination can conceive no adequate cause for the terrible implacability which could reign in the bosom of a-and Faust, when on the blasted heath beatified spirit, and deny to a despairing brother one word of consolation in his awful abandonment. If SHE could condemn him, how can he be forgiven?

Such a subject, however attractive to a writer of strong imagination, and however promising in appearance, proves much more difficult to treat adequately, if, indeed, it can ever be so treated at all, than scenes and characters of a more earthly nature, where strictly human agents appeal to a kindred reason and sympathy.

The communion of the supernatural with the natural has been a favorite theme, and a certain stumbling-block, to the greatest poets. Homer succeeded best, because he invented little, taking the materials within his reach-and his gods and goddesses are but human beings, with a loftier physical and mental stature; it was easy to introduce them implementing the inferior powers of their favorite heroes, but we feel that, in all that should distinguish the supernatural Being above the human nature, the great

he upbraids Mephisto with the cruel fate of her he should have protected from all harm, and curses himself as the dupe of a pitiless fiend, does but vent the reproaches many a man has heaped on himself, shuddering, if he had a conscience, at the cruel treachery which has rent a heart that beat only for him. But when the great German leaves the popular guide to invent a sphere of supernatural action, when Faust appears in scenes where the author has no guide from tradition, and subject to temptations of a less human character, we see how little mere mortal wit can observe any semblance of probability, or appearance of cohesion, in attempting that for which there is no actual precedent in human experience. There is but one Magician, and he has long laid aside all pretensions above mortality. Patient and sagacious interrogation of nature, in disclosing the hidden properties of matter, has evoked powers which the genii of the lamp might have envied, and wealth, which would have satisfied the avarice of the alchemists.

The greatest can but draw the super- | excellence, though of invention, the test natural from knowledge of the natural, of the highest genius, we find no traces. and we have but human nature exagge- There is throughout a want of cohesion, rated in the majority of instances; Shak- if we consider "Childe Harold" as an atspeare's Ariel, and the spirits in "Manfred" tempt at poetic creation, for the "Childe" are nearly the only exceptions. Homer is a voice, not a living pilgrim; but if we is greatest where he describes the actions recognize Lord Byron himself under an of men, and the submissive grace and ten- alias, narrating what he saw, and expressderness of women. Shakspeare stirs the ing in just and vivid language what he heart, and awakens our admiration most felt, we have a poem, the various merit strongly when he depicts the loving con- of which it is difficult to over-estimate. stancy of the gentler sex, and the masculine heroism of Coriolanus or of Henry V. Goethe has an easy task when he echoes the sarcastic mockery, or paints the demon heart of Mephisto; but the master-hand is seen in the calm and natural beauty of the "Iphigenia," and above all in his unequaled delineation of the female nature; he who could draw such characters as Gretchen, Clara, Mignon, and Adelheid von Weislingen, has surpassed all others, Shakspeare more effectively than the consummate himself, in this the most interesting province of observation and invention.

The vigor of description therein displayed is indeed without a parallel. Who has equaled, or even approached, the power displayed in stanzas 27, 28, 29 of the fourth canto? In them we see actually brought before us by the magical force of his language, the exquisite and fugitive beauties of an Italian sunset, which would have mocked the pictorial art of Claude or Turner to transfer to canvas. Mere words are made to appeal to the mind.

skill of the masters of painting could
appeal to the sense of vision. Even
Homer is here surpassed for a moment,
for no where does he bring before us so
striking and so difficult a phase of nature's
ever-varying countenance; not even in
the familiar passage in the eighth Rhap-
sody-

Ως δ' ότ' εν ουρανω αστρα φαεινην αμφι σεληνην
Φαίνεται αριπρεπέα. K. T. 2.

"The kindled marble's bust may wear More poesy upon its speaking brow Than aught less than the Homeric page may

bear."

And Lord Byron, though he has clothed his demons with majesty and power, though he has avoided the vulgar error of too easily vanquishing evil by good, Satan by Abdiel, yet hardly introduces these for purposes worthy their supernatural powers, unless it be to justify the magnificent "Hymn of the Spirits" in worship round the throne of Ahrimanes. In the first two cantos of "Childe though it well deserves the homage Byron Harold," the objective element is strongly pays it in the fourth canto of the “Proascendant, written as they were at a period of life when the world was still phecy of Dante”– fresh, and the essential identity of human nature, under all its phases, hardly appreciated. The boundless command of his own language, and the liveliest susceptibility to the beauty or grandeur of nature, produced a poem which riveted immediately the attention of contemporaries, partly, indeed, due to a comparative novelty of style, and the want of sustained originality, in the poetry which immediately preceded its publication; something too may have been owing to the lesser preoccupation of the public by the floods of ephemeral and amusing literature which dissipate the intellectual tastes of the readers of our day. It is in the two latter cantos, and especially the last, in which we find his powers completely matured, whether reflective or descriptive. In these cantos he has carried those important elements of poetry to their highest

In stanza 102, canto III., we seem even to hear and see the busy summer forest life of birds and insects in the woods of Clarens, the rustle of the leaves in the early summer breath of June, and the very plash of Alpine waterfalls; the beautiful living solitude, unspoilt by the intrusion of man, comes before us as if in spirit, or in a dream we were transported to the Swiss. wilderness; it is transferred to paper as delicately and with truer coloring than could have been effected by the calotype: but these scenes in their quiet loveliness yet suggest reminiscences of the world which the author and the reader have for a moment forgotten, and the vigorous