sketches of Gibbon and Voltaire, who had long lived within sight of that beautiful scenery, come like a cloud over the mind which had just been reveling in the laughing sunshine of a Swiss landscape. Applied to graver scenes, the same matchless power nearly rivals the merit of invention, and when by the lake of Thrasymene (C. IV., VV. 62, 63, 64) he recalls the strife that made Rome to reel on her seven-hilled throne, and strove with inexorable fate to reverse her stern decree, the ancient battle comes before us as by a lightning-flash darted into the abysses of the past, as the soldiers of Carthage and of Rome pass before us in their deadly struggle.

Nothing can be more exquisite than the various harmony of the stanzas from 86 to 104 of canto III.: in these every variety of emotion and of feeling is characterized; of admiration, reverence, love, awe; and in the apostrophe to Clarens, sweet Clarens," that passion which he felt with so much of its earthly alloy is exalted to a refinement almost unearthly, and to a dignity which truly belongs to it, as in its purity the least selfish of human desires. Was there ever a tribute to the Divinity of Love so exquisite as that contained

in stanza 100 of canto III.?

His soft and summer breath, whose tender power Passes the strength of storms in their most desolate hour."

Such language may fairly excite a rapturous admiration, resembling that which he professes, and only professes to have felt, when beholding the marble loveliness of the Medicean Venus.

But in a different mood, and with feelings disappointed or blunted, he afterwards recurs to this, the dream of youth, and the disenchantment of maturity; and as a warning against the indulgence of that passionate and eager credulity, what homily or maxim likely to prove so effective as the wild strains of the poet of the passion:

"Of its own beauty is the mind diseased And fevers into false creation; where, Where are the charms the sculptor's soul has seized?

In him alone, could nature show as fair. Where are the charms and virtues which we dare

Conceive in boyhood and pursue as menThe unreached Paradise of our despair, Which o'er-informs the pencil and the pen, And overpowers the page, where they should bloom again?" C. IV., st. 122.

The quiet and gentle caveat of Schiller, in the "Lay of the Bell," may excite a sigh and a smile in those who have experienced its truth, and is perhaps more suited to the sobriety of the disenchanted, who alone are likely to appreciate it:

"Ach! des Lebens schönste Feier
Endigt auch des Lebens Mai-
Mit dem Gurtel, mit dem Schleier,
Reisst der schöne wahn entzwei."

Das Lied von der Glocke.

The strong sensual impulses of Lord Byron's character communicated to much of his poetry its vivid charm. Tasso has somewhere said:

"Poi dietro a sensi
Vedi, che la Ragione ha corte l'ali."

And, certainly, the poets and orators who most strongly rivet attention, are those in whom intellectual and animal vigor concur. The illustration of the abstract by the concrete is an essential element both of poetry and oratory; but the choice of illustrations will depend upon something besides the intellectual nature of the man. The similes which abound in Homer are indicative of a martial or combative disposition, and a propensity to observe the grander or more striking phenomena of nature-the rush of waters, or the destructive rage of fire; while the illustrations of the drooping poppy, and the uprooted olive, show that neither grace nor tenderness were wanting to deck the creations of that imperial genius. Milton's numerous similes, too, are in harmony with his austere and somewhat harsh character, sometimes little heedful of beauty or grace. Lord Byron's very numerous comparisons, all admirable, and often under the form of a prosopopia, are indicative of the warm clothed inanimate imagination which shapes with the breathing realities of life; for example, where the Medicean Venus is described, in stanza 48, canto 4:

"Here, too, the goddess loves in stone, and fills
The air around with beauty; we inhale
The ambrosial aspect, which beheld, instills
Part of its immortality."

The comparison is here delicately insinuated rather than stated, and the fragrance of flowers, addressed to another sense, suggested as an illustration of the effect produced by this matchless statue on that of sight. Again, in stanza 28 of the same canto, another simile as exquisite, as refined, and as eminently sensual, oc

curs:

"Gently flows

The deep-dyed Brenta, where their hues instill The odorous purple of a new-born rose, Which streams upon the stream, and glassed within it glows."

One sense is here, too, brought in to implement another, and the colors that glow in the clouds of an Italian sunset are presented in twofold reality before the reader by a ready, familiar, and charming object of comparison. In stanza 94 of the third canto another illustration occurs, marked by the same vigorous traits, and admirably in harmony with the object to

be illustrated.

But in that wonderful stanza, the 87th of the third canto, which conveys to the mind by description all and more than all our own senses could do, we have a simile as exquisite as it is difficult:

through "Childe Harold " are forcible and just, giving nerve and vigor to the more subjective portions of the poem. That of Napoleon particularly is probably as true and comprehensive as will ever be made, even if his life shall ever be written as it should be. That of Gibbon is excellent and characteristic; and the tributes to Italian genius in Galileo, Dante, Ariosto, and Tasso, are graceful and truthful. It is not easy, however, to understand Lord is truer to history in his estimate of the Byron's sympathy with Tasso, though he Duke of Ferrara than the more politic or more charitable Goethe, who, in gratitude for his favorable experience of ducal courts, flung the mantle of his genius over one to whom history and Lord Byron may have been somewhat unjust; for Tasso was through life too conscious of his genius, and too sensitive of wrongs or slight, lacking that mental robustness which has characterized the greatest of our species. He who is conscious of that within which can court the Rhadamanthine justice of posterity, should surely, in calm self-reliance, disdain to conciliate the pity, or solicit the tardy suffrages of cotemporaries. Byron himself, perhaps, indulged something too much in similar complaints, which could but serve to gratify the malice of enemies, or provoke the contempt of fools; yet no one better than he has stigmatized this weak egotism of suffering:

"Each has his wrong, but feeble sufferers groan

With brain-born dreams of evil, all their own."

-Childe Harold.

And in the "Prophecy of Dante," he has with much skill and truth to the nature of him whose verse he imitates, launched severe and prophetic strains on the part of one whose history had some points of resemblance with his own. The denunciation of the ingratitude of Florence to its greatest bard, harshly driven into exile, was not the less sincere that the ungrateful capital which had witnessed his own literary triumphs. and the land that should have been proud of his birth, were perhaps indicated in their southern proto

types.

There was a great resemblance, too, in their domestic infelicities; and if Boccaccio more than hinted that poets would do well to abstain from matrimony, past

question, the wives of some of the most eminent had reason to regret that they had not practically contributed to the maintenance of Boccaccio's opinion.

Lord Byron speaks for Dante as the latter might well have spoken in his own person, had he written in a language less flexible than his own. In spite of the obscurity, even the occasional bizarrerie of his great poem, and the minute historical knowledge requisite for its right appreciation, Dante has exerted even an exoteric influence, which attests the grandeur of his intellect. We know that Goethe speaks of him with reverence, calling him a Nature;" and the high prophetic poetic spirit which pervades the "Divine Comedy," more even than this magnificent eulogium, might justify his addition as a fourth to the grand trio, which has alone obtained the difficult suffrage of German criticism.

66

There is a thoughtful melancholy wisdom pervading the four cantos of the "Prophecy," which, like passages of a similar character in "Childe Harold," are in favorable contrast with the careless levity which pervades the "Vision of Judgment," and the polemical portions of "Don Juan."

The idea of Prometheus attracted Byron, as it had done Eschylus, Goethe, and Shelley-and if the wrongs, the woes, the wrath and defiance of the Titan were to be set forth in verse, none better than he could have arrayed these emotions in words, more fitted to brave the sensual

omnipotence of Olympus: but the fable is too transparent to be of deep or permanent poetic interest; for Truth is as much the essence of the highest Poetry, as of Science itself.

Primitive human nature invented a god in its own likeness, knowing no better or higher model-a jealous and a brutal god, who used his omnipotence as the worst Cæsar afterwards used his scepter, and by immolating on its altar a victim nobler than the god, justified itself in irreverence. But we, wiser than our fathers, may recognize a Prometheus who triumphs not vainly in defying a tyrannical omnipotence, or in proclaiming the sufferings which baffled desire of power or of knowledge, must inflict a Prometheus not equaling himself with God, and raging in his baffled impotentiality, but a mightier Titan, who, if he has not succeeded in the autogenic creation of man, has yet brought down fire from heaven unrebuked, and who has wrung from matter its eternal secrets; and has made the modern man more potent than the gods of the ancient Olympus; who has taught him to defy the tempest, to curb and direct the lightning, to eradicate the most fatal and desolating disease, to call from their dark homes the genii of the lamp of knowledge, as patient and docile slaves of that Reason which has taught him that through obedience, and not defiance, lies the road to power.

The elder Prometheus was a true but unintended symbol of antique human reason striving to obtain knowledge in its activity, while all around lay, awaiting own way, by questioning itself with barren the efforts of the modern Titan, those great but unsuspected secrets which have been the magnificent reward of a wiser desire for Truth.

The exquisite music of the "Hebrew Melodies," and the half-reverential, halfsensual tone which pervades them, are as favorable and beautiful an example of Lord Byron's powers as the finest passages in "Childe Harold;" even as in them, the objective and subjective elements of poetry blend in perfect harmony, and leave an impress on the mind and on the feelings which abstract, or merely cold representations of tenderness or reverence but feebly imitate.

If it is the whole scope and aim of the drama, as surely it must be, to hold the "mirror up to Nature," then it is useless