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many utterly irreconcilable sets of mere barbarian robbers-the equally barbarous chiefs of whom were pretending to play the parts of gentlemen and generals-and, what was perhaps still more trying, perpetually annoyed, interrupted, and baffled by the ignorance, folly, and obstinate drivelling, of his own coadjutors, such as Colonel Stanhope and the German Philhellenes-he, and he alone, appears to have sustained throughout the calmness of a philosopher, the integrity of a patriot, and the constancy of a hero. If anything could have done Greece real good, in her own sense of the word, at this crisis, it must have been the prolongation of the life he had devoted to her service. He had brought with him to her shores a name glorious and commanding; but, ere he died, the influence of his tried prudence, magnanimous self-denial, and utter superiority to faction, and all factious views, had elevated him into a position of authority, before which, even the most ambitiously unprincipled of the Greek leaders were begin ning to feel the necessity of controlling their passions, and silencing their pretensions. The arrival of part of the loan from England-procured, as it unques tionably had been, chiefly through the influence of his name-was, no doubt, the circumstance that gave such commanding elevation to his personal influence in Greece, during the closing scenes of his career. But nothing except the visible and undoubted excellence of his deportment on occasions the most perplexing-nothing but the moral dignity expressed in every word and action of his while in Greecenothing but the eminent superiority of personal character, resources, and genius which he had exhibited-could possibly have reconciled the minds of those hostile factions to the notion of investing any Foreigner and Frank with the supreme authority of their executive government. We have no sort of doubt, that if Byron had died three months later, he would have died governor of all the emancipated provinces of Greece. This is a melancholy thought, but it is also a proud one.

As for the ultimate issue of the present conflict-that, even if Byron had lived, and continued to act as gloriously as he had begun-must still, in our humble opinion, have remained a matter of the extremest doubt. The ques VOL. XVII.

tion is not-Whether we wish Greece to be free from the Turkish sway? As to this, there is no diversity of feeling among any men of common education, and common feeling in any country of Christendom. The real question is-Whether the Greeks have not chosen to commence their conflict at a most improper and imprudent time? And that question we assuredly cannot have any difficulty about answering. They began their conflict when all Europe was in profound peace; so that they could not have any rational expectation of being supported by any foreign power whatever. This was of itself sufficient idiocy. But more still, they began their conflict ere they had either heads to guide them

hands to fight for them-or money to sustain them. Their chief men are either paltry intriguers from Constantinople, or wild robber captains from their hills. They have no army, and scarcely any prospect of having one, as anybody, that has read M. Gamba's book, must be convinced. They have no resources worth speaking of, but what they get from abroad-And what permanent or effectual aid can a nation expect from loans such as they have been asking, and in part obtained? There is no real spirit of any kind among them, except only the spirit of hatred to the Turks, and the spirit of vile jealousy, and hatred of each other. They began fifty years too soon. Had they waited, education was beginning to find its way among the more wealthy classes-commerce was beginning to flourish-a national spirit was beginning to be formed-but they started ere any one of the appliances was in a state of efficient preparation. Witness one fact for a thousand. A private English nobleman, without any practice either of arms or politics, was, almost from the moment he appeared amongst them, felt universally to be the only man capable of discharging the highest duties in their state. It is true, that this man was Byron ;but, after all, what would a foreigner like Byron have been in any country really fit and ripe for playing the part that Greece has undertaken? Not nothing surely-but as surely not very much.

The wisdom or folly of the Greek cause, as it is called, has, however, very little to do with our judgment as to Lord Byron's conduct, after he had

U

espoused it. That conduct, we repeat, was blamelessly illustrious-it was clear, high, and glorious throughout. The last poem he wrote was produced upon his birth-day, not many weeks before he died. We consider it as one of the finest and most touching effusions of his noble genius. We think he who reads it, and can ever after bring himself to regard even the worst transgressions that have ever been charged against Lord Byron, with any feelings but those of humble sorrow and manly pity, is not deserving of the name of man. The deep and passionate struggles with the inferior elements of his nature (and ours) which it records -the lofty thirsting after purity-the heroic devotion of a soul half weary of life, because unable to believe in its own powers to live up to what it so intensely felt to be, and so reverentially honoured as, the right-the whole picture of this mighty spirit, often darkened, but never sunk, often erring, but never ceasing to see and to worship the beauty of virtue-the repentance of it, the anguish, the aspiration, almost stifled in despair-the whole of this is such a whole, that we are sure no man can read these solemn verses too often, and we recommend them for repetition, as the best and most conclusive of all possible answers, whenever the name of Byron is insulted by those who permit themselves to forget nothing either in his life or his writings but the good.

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We believe we said, at the beginning of this paper, that we should speak, in the course of it, of Lord Byron's genius also, as well as of his personal character. We feel, however, that it would be in vain to enter upon this at any length now; nor are we sure that almost anybody would wish us to do so. He unquestionably has taken his place as a British classic of the first order: Of that there can be no doubt. Individual men, even of great talents, may dispute and cavil under the influence of individual prejudices, either of poetical theory or of personal feeling; but the voice of England, the voice of Europe, has spoken, and has been heard. There is no possibility that any man should, without the highest genius, exert over the mind of his contemporaries that sort of influence which Byron has exerted, without deserving to do so, and without continuing to exert a mighty influence over the mind of all future time. He is, and he always will be,

one of

"The dead, but sceptred Sovereigns, who still rule Our spirits from their urns.

Yet he died at seven-and-thirty ; and who shall say-nay, who can believe, that the genius of Byron, if his life had been prolonged, might, must not have produced works sufficient to leave even the best of what he has bequeathed us comparatively in the shade?

1825.

Lord Byron.

He was one of those true masters, whose successive works attested, almost always, progressive power. We cannot but look upon the first two cantos of Childe Harold, in spite of their many exquisite passages, as weak, even boyish, compositions, compared with the third-infinitely more so with the fourth. In that last canto of Harold, so rich with its elaborate pomp of language and versification-so pregnant with passionate thought, with beauty of all sorts, with the exquisite feeling of natural beauty, the beauty of art, the solemnity of earthly ruin and decayso massively strong, and yet so elastically buoyant throughout;-in the lament of Tasso, which we think is, as a whole, superior to Pope's best and greatest effort, the Abelard and Eloisa, and indeed to any poem of the same class that the world has seen-in that specimen of intense unaffected pathos, and most graceful versification ;-in the splendid narrative of the Corsair and Lara, so easy, so terse, so vigorous in composition, and so abounding in the display of compact and complete imaginative power;-in the pensive elegance of Parasina ;-above all, in the colossal, mysterious, heart-rend ing gloom of Manfred :-in all and in each of these we certainly apprehend that no succeeding age, in which genius is appreciated and honoured, can ever cease to acknowledge and reverence the soul of a poet, and the hand highest class. of a master, of the very The few, the very few, who stand above Byron, must not be classed at all.

In the other serious poems of Lord Byron (which we have not named) the public appears to have decided justly, that he has been less fortunate. The Corsair threw the Giaour and the Bride of Abydos entirely into the shade; and, in spite of many isolated passages, quite equal to any he ever produced, especially in Cain and Sardanapalus, his more formal dramatic poems, have been weighed in the balance against Manfred, and found wanting.

His Beppo is a very clever jeu d'esprit: but DoN JUAN must not be alluded to so briefly. We have little hesitation in saying, that we regard that work as, upon the whole, the most original, remarkable, and powerful of all the works of Lord Byron's genius. The exquisite grace of its

language and versification (generally
speaking, for it is often very careless
as to both of these matters), the keen
and searching observation-the per-
fect knowledge of human nature in
very many of its weakest, and in very
many of its strongest points-the wit

the humour-the really Shakespea-
rean touches of character scattered over
every page-these are excellencies
which lie sufficiently on the surface of
The pro-
this extraordinary poem.
found philosophical truth displayed in
the conduct of the work-the grada-
tions of the incidents, and the fine
developement of the principal charac-
ter-these are matters demanding more
study, and sure, if that study be given,
to reward it abundantly.

Nothing can be more true, than that Lord Byron possessed, after all, but a limited knowledge of man and man's nature. Such is certainly the case; for if it had been otherwise, we must have seen a wider range of characters and sentiments in his works. He knew not, neither does he deal with, the sound, healthy workings of virtuous, innocent, unpolluted natures. No; but he deals with the inmost recesses of the dark heart-he pourtrays the blackest glooms of the most powerful, though the most miserable of passions-he tears the mask from the front of frigid hypocrisyhe lays bare the misery of unsatisfied infidel intellect on the one hand-and the worthless poverty of mere conventional forms of goodness upon the other. In Don Juan, he has shewn himself to be, as a wit and a satirist, quite equal to Le Sage-to Voltaire himself; and he has done so without darkening from our eyes one spark of that nobler and more enthusiastic genius, which nature had never before granted to any man in conjunction with such powers of wit as he possessed. No one can defend the licentiousness of some descriptions in this poem ; but the refinement and art of the whole composition are so great, that we really do not entertain any apprehensions of its ever being a favourite book with the sort of readers likely to be essentially injured by those offensive passages, which, after all, are not very many-not nearly so many, certainly, as those who take their opinions from the reviews must imagine.

We shall take leave to conclude this subject (for the present) with another

quotation from the letters of Sir Egerton Brydges. In spite of some feebleness of expression, there can be no doubt that this respectable veteran speaks a great deal of very honest, manly truth about Lord Byron.

:

"Such a perpetual tumult of violent emotions as that in which Lord Byron lived, perhaps contributed to shorten his existence it was a fever which had a direct tendency to wear him out; and weakened him for the attack of any accidental illness, which thus became irresistible. If there be any one who is not affected and awed by so sudden a dissolution of so many extraordinary endow ments; of gifts of nature so very brilliant; of acquisitions so unlikely to recur; of such a fund of images and sentiments; and observations, and reflections, and opinions, so matured, so polished, and so habituated to be ready to pour themselves forth to the world on every occasion; he must be a creature totally insensible, and stupidly indifferent to all those instinctive sympathies which make us regard with affection and pride the intellectual and more dignified part of our being. He who is himself feeble in intellect, is yet commonly conscious of its value; he admires and views with awe the high in talent; he envies, and would desire to possess, what is thus denied to him; he may not adequately admire the brilliancy of the pros pect, when the sun lights it up; but he feels a deep chill and loss of pleasure when the sun retires and leaves all before him an indistinct mass of darkness. Lord Byron was often, in truth, a sun that lighted up the landscapes of the earth, and penetrated into the human heart, and surrounded its altar with beams of brightness.

"His death is an awful dispensation of Providence, and humbles the pride of man's ambition, and of his self-estimation. In the eye of Providence those powers we estimate so loftily must be as nothing, or we cannot persuade ourselves they would be thus suddenly cut off before their time.

"But to our narrow ken, the splendid genius of Lord Byron must still be considered of mighty import. Yet it is the inseparable lot of man, not to know the full value of a treasure till it is taken from us.' Highly as we admired Lord Byron in his life, we shall admire him, if possible, infinitely more, now that it is gone. Variety will not make amends for intenseness in particular paths: but

Lord Byron had both unequalled variety and intenseness in all. He had not only the supremacy of a sublime, sombre, melancholy, mysterious imagination; but he had an inexhaustible fund of wit and humour, and a most precise and minute knowledge of all the details of common life; a familiarity with all its habits and expressions; a lively and perfect insight into all its absurdities; and a talent of exposing them, so practised, so easy, and so happy, that it might be supposed he had never wandered into the visionary, and never occupied himself with anything but the study of man in familiar society. The alternate and opposite ability of throwing off the incumbrance of all degrading circumstances from imagery, which is the characteristic of the higher poetry, and that of bringing forth those very set-offs for the purposes of degradation, seems to require such contrary habits of attention, as well as of temper and feeling, that they have been scarcely ever united in the same person. Nor is it much less extraordinary, that in this, as in his graver imagination, all is faithful to nature: there is no exaggeration ; the points selected for his wit and humour are sketched with admirable exactness; nay, the surprising likeness is one of the great attractions of this comic painting."

"Wherever Lord Byron has given any images, sentiments, or thoughts, as his own, there is no reason to suspect that he has imputed to them more force than his own mind and bosom bore witness to. If, therefore, there are to be found in his numerous poems frequent passages of noble thoughts, and generous and affecting feelings, they are such as on those occasions must have been the inmates of his own soul and heart. They shew themselves by their freshness and nature never to be put on, dress.

‚— never worn as a

"Lord Byron was himself the being of imagination, whose character breaks out in all his writings; his life was that of the wild magical spirit, of which the feelings, the adventures, and the eccentricities, astonish and enchant us in his inventions. The public notoriety of this makes us receive much from him, which in others might be deemed exaggerated and over-wrought. A character and life so singular will always add interest to the writings of the poet. Another mode of life might possibly have produced poetry not less full of power, but it would not have been the same sort of power:

-it might have had more sobriety and regularity; it would not have had the same raciness, and, probably, not the same originality and force: it would have left all the ground untouched where Lord Byron has shewn most genius and most novelty, and upon which no one is likely to follow him. If he has done wrong, if the evil parts overbalance the good, so much the worse for the value of his genius. But do they overbalance the good? It is not evil to detect and expose hypocrisy; it is not evil to pierce the disguise of meretricious love; and the picture which renders it ridiculous will avail beyond a thousand thundering sermons!

"But they who are angry with the foulness of the prurient curiosity that detects, would not scruple to be guilty of the crime detected! Such pictures are, indeed, a compound of good and ill: they may corrupt some innocent minds, while they may check in their course of vice others already corrupted. But this is a great set-off to the objections even of some of the least defensible parts of Lord Byron's works.

"There is a very doubtful good in believing the mass of mankind much more virtuous than they are, and thus increasing the success of hypocrisy and insincerity. If they are represented worse, the falsehood of the representation will recoil upon the author."

"There are extremes into which he has been sometimes led by a course of sentiment and thought, and a line of fiction, which, on deep consideration, will not be found to have the tendency, or deserve the character, that superficial readers and critics have assigned to them. One of the grand faults of mankind, which Lord Byron's temper, the impulses of his heart, and the vigour of his faculties, prompted him to combat and expose, was hypocrisy and false pretension. He

saw with indignation the unjust estimate of character the world was accustomed to make, and the flagrant wrong with which it was accustomed to distribute admiration, honours, and rewards. He bent, therefore, the whole force of his mighty faculties, to expose these absurdities in striking colours; to throw a broader light on their real features; and to draw the veil from the cloven foot, and the satanic qualities which had hitherto been concealed.

"He would plead, that, in detecting vice under the robe of virtue, he was not warring with virtue's cause, but supporting it; and that the cry of alarm was but the interested and corrupt cry of those, who could not bear that their own cloak of disguise should be torn from them!

"But has he not, in the effort to pull down hypocrisy, set up naked and audacious crime? This is the charge against him; and it is indeed a charge which has sometimes a strong appearance of being well founded. All powers of great energy will occasionally overshoot the mark: the decision must be made according to the predominance of good or evil. We must estimate by the comparative mischief of the character elevated, and the character depressed, by these exhibitions. Now, daring and open crime always brings with it its own antidote; but concealed rottenness works under ground, covered with flowers, and spreads diseases and pestilence, without a suspicion whence the sufferings and the destructions come,

and, therefore, continues to prostrate its victims, unchecked by its success, and uncorrected by time."

We are very far from wishing it to be supposed that we entirely adopt some of these views of Sir Egerton; but we adopt certainly the general course and tenor of his opinion; and we are quite sure that all he has said is well worthy to be considered, and that very seriously.

-Look on me!-There is an order Of mortals on the earth, who do become Old in their youth, and die ere middle age, Without the violence of warlike death; Some perishing of pleasure-some of studySome worn with toil-some of mere wearinessSome of disease-and some INSANITYAnd some of withered, or of broken heartsFor this last is a malady which slays More than are numbered in the lists of Fate! Taking all shapes, and bearing many names;— Look upon me!-for even of ALL these things Have I partaken; and of all these things One were enough: Then wonder not.".

MANFRED.

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