the Witch of the Alps,-between Manfred and the Abbot, are instances of this tendency. Manfred, after a few unimportant speeches, has all the talk to himself. The other interlocutors are nothing more than good listeners. They drop an occasional question, or ejaculation, which sets Manfred off again on the inexhaustible topic of his personal feelings. If we examine the fine passages in Lord Byron's dramas,-the description of Rome, for example, in Manfred, -the description of a Venetian revel in Marino Faliero, the dying invective which the old Doge pronounces against Venice, we shall find there is nothing dramatic in them; that they derive none of their effect from the character or situation of the speaker; and that they would have been as fine, or finer, if they had been published as fragments of blank verse by Lord Byron. There is scarcely a speech in Shakspeare of which the same could be said. No skilful reader of the plays of Shakspeare can endure to see what are called the fine things taken out, under the name of “Beauties ” or of "Elegant Extracts;" or to hear any single passage,-"To be or not to be," for example,-quoted as a sample of the great poet."To be or not to be," has merit undoubtedly as a composition. It would have merit if put into the mouth of a chorus. But its merit as a composition vanishes when compared with its merit as belonging to Hamlet. It is not too much to say that the great plays of Shakspeare would lose less by being deprived of all the passages which are commonly called the fine passages, than those passages lose by being read separately from the play. This is perhaps the highest praise which can be given to a dramatist. On the other hand, it may be doubted whether there is, in all Lord Byron's plays a single remarkable passage which owes any portion of its interest or effect to its connection with the characters or the action. He has written only one scene, as far as we can recollect, which is dramatic even in manner-the scene between Lucifer and Cain. The conference in that scene is animated, and each of the interlocutors has a fair share of it. But this scene, when examined, will be found to be a confirmation of our remarks. It is a dialogue only in form. It is a soliloquy in essence. It is in reality a debate carried on within one single unquiet and sceptical mind. The question and the answers, the objections and the solutions, all belong to the same character.

A writer who showed so little of dramatic skill in works professedly dramatic, was not likely to write narrative with dramatic effect. Nothing could indeed be more rude and careless than the structure of his narrative poems. He seems to have thought, with the hero of the Rehearsal, that the plot was good for nothing but to bring in fine things. His two longest works, Childe Harold and Don Juan, have no plan whatever. Either of them might have been extended to any length, or cut short at any point. The state in which the Giaour appears, illustrates the manner in which all his poems were constructed. They are all, like the Giaour, collections of fragments; and though there may be no empty spaces marked by asterisks, it is still easy to perceive, by the clumsiness of the joining, where the parts, for the sake of which the whole was composed end and begin.

It was in description and meditation that he excelled. "Description," as he said in Don Juan,“ was his forte." His manner is indeed peculiar, and is almost unequalled,-rapid, sketchy, full of vigour; the selection happy; the strokes few and bold. In spite of the reverence which we feel for the genius of Mr. Wordsworth, we cannot but think that the minuteness of his descriptions often diminishes their effect. He has accustomed himself to gaze

on nature with the eye of a lover-to dwell on every feature-and to mark every change of aspect. Those beauties which strike the most negligent observer, and those which only a close attention discovers, are equally familiar to him, and are equally prominent in his poetry. The proverb of old Hesiod, that half is often more than the whole, is eminently applicable to description. The policy of the Dutch, who cut down most of the precious trees in the Spice Islands, in order to raise the value of what remained, was a policy which poets would do well to imitate. It was a policy which no poet understood better than Lord Byron. Whatever his faults might be, he was never, while his mind retained its vigour, accused of prolixity.

His descriptions, great as was their intrinsic merit, derived their principal interest from the feeling which always mingled with them. He was himself the beginning, the middle, and the end of all his own poetry,-the hero of every tale—the chief object in every landscape. Harold, Lara, Manfred, and a crowd of other characters, were universally considered merely as loose incognitos of Byron; and there is every reason to believe that he meant them to be so considered. The wonders of the outer world -The Tagus, with the mighty fleets of England riding on its bosom-the towers of Cintra overhanging the shaggy forest of cork-trees and willowsthe glaring marble of Pentelicus-the banks of the Rhine-the glaciers of Clarens the sweet Lake of Leman-the dell of Egeria, with its summerbirds and rustling lizards-the shapeless ruins of Rome, overgrown with ivy and wall-flowers-the stars, the sea, the mountains;-all were mere accessories-the background to one dark and melancholy figure.

ness.

Never had any writer so vast a command of the whole eloquence of scorn, misanthropy, and despair. That Marah was never dry. No art could sweeten, no draughts could exhaust, its perennial waters of bitterNever was there such variety in monotony as that of Byron. From maniac laughter to piercing lamentation, there was not a single note of human anguish of which he was not master. Year after year, and month after month, he continued to repeat that to be wretched is the destiny of all; that to be eminently wretched, is the destiny of the eminent; that all the desires by which we are cursed lead alike to misery ;-if they are not gratified, to the misery of disappointment-if they are gratified, to the misery of satiety. His principal heroes are men who have arrived by different roads at the same goal of despair-who are sick of life-who are at war with society-who are supported in their anguish only by an unconquerable pride, resembling that of Prometheus on the rock, or of Satan in the burning marl; who can master their agonies by the force of their will, and who, to the last, defy the whole power of earth and heaven. He always describes himself as a man of the same kind with his favourite creations, as a man whose heart had been withered-whose capacity for happiness was gone, and could not be restored; but whose invincible spirit dared the worst that could befall him, here or hereafter.

How much of this morbid feeling sprung from an original disease of the mind-how much from real misfortune-how much from the nervousness of dissipation-how much of it was fanciful-how much of it was merely affected-it is impossible for us, and would probably have been impossible for the most intimate friends of Lord Byron, to decide. Whether there ever existed, or can ever exist, a person answering to the description which he gave of himself, may be doubted but that he was not such a person is beyond all doubt. It is ridiculous to imagine that a man, whose mind was

really imbued with scorn of his fellow-creatures, would have published three or four books every year in order to tell them so; or that a man, who could say with truth that he neither sought sympathy nor needed it, would have admitted all Europe to hear his farewell to his wife, and his blessings on his child. In the second canto of Childe Harold, he tells us that he is insensible to fame and obloquy

"Il may such contest now the spirit move,

Which heeds nor keen reproof nor partial praise."

Yet we know, on the best evidence, that, a day or two before he published these lines, he was greatly, indeed childishly, elated by the compliments paid to his maiden speech in the House of Lords.

We are far, however, from thinking that his sadness was altogether feigned. He was naturally a man of great sensibility-he had been ill educated-his feelings had been early exposed to sharp trials—he had been crossed in his boyish love-he had been mortified by the failure of his first literary efforts he was straitened in pecuniary circumstances—he was unfortunate in his domestic relations-the public treated him with cruel injustice-his health and spirits suffered from his dissipated habits of lifehe was, on the whole, an unhappy man. He early discovered that, by parading his unhappiness before the multitude he excited an unrivalled interest. The world gave him every encouragement to talk about his mental sufferings. The effect which his first confessions produced, induced him to affect much that he did not feel; and the affectation probably reacted on his feelings. How far the character in which he exhibited himself was genuine, and how far theatrical, would probably have puzzled himself to say. There can be no doubt that this remarkable man owed the vast influence which he exercised over his contemporaries, at least as much to his gloomy egotism as to the real power of his poetry. We never could very clearly understand how it is that egotism, so unpopular in conversation, should be so popular in writing; or how it is that men who affect in their compositions qualities and feelings which they have not, impose so much more easily on their contemporaries than on posterity. The interest which the loves of Petrarch excited in his own time, and the pitying fondness with which half Europe looked upon Rousseau are well known. To readers of our time, the love of Petrarch seems to have been love of that kind which breaks no hearts; and the sufferings of Rousseau to have deserved laughter rather than pity— to have been partly the counterfeited, and partly the consequences of his own perverseness and vanity.

What our grandchildren may think of the character of Lord Byron, as exhibited in his poetry, we will not pretend to guess. It is certain, that the interest which he excited during his life is without a parallel in literary history. The feeling with which young readers of poetry regarded him, can be conceived only by those who have experienced it. To people who are unacquainted with real calamity, "nothing is so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy." This faint image of sorrow has in all ages been considered by young gentlemen as an agreeable excitement. Old gentlemen, and middle-aged gentlemen, have so many real causes of sadnesss, that they are rarely inclined" to be as sad as night only for wantonness." Indeed they want the power almost as much as the inclination. We know very few persons engaged in active life, who, even if they were to procure stools to be melancholy upon, and were to sit down with all the premeditation of Mas

ter Stephen, would be able to enjoy much of what somebody calls the "ecstasy of woe."

Among that large class of young persons whose reading is almost entirely confined to works of imagination, the popularity of Lord Byron was unbounded. They bought pictures of him; they treasured up the smallest relics of him; they learned his poems by heart, and did their best to write like him, and to look like him. Many of them practised at the glass, in the hope of catching the curl of the upper lip, and the scowl of the brow, which appear in some of his portraits. A few discarded their neckloths, in imitation of their great leader. For some years the Minerva press sent forth no novel without a mysterious, unhappy, Lara-like peer. The number of hopeful undergraduates and medical students who became things of dark imaginings,—on whom the freshness of the heart ceased to fall like dew,— whose passions had consumed themselves to dust, and to whom the relief of fears was denied, passes all calculation. This was not the worst. There was created in the minds of many of these enthusiasts, a pernicious and absurd association between intellectual power and moral depravity. From the poetry of Lord Byron they drew a system of ethics, compounded of misanthropy and voluptuousness; a system in which the two great commandments were, to hate your neighbour, and to love your neighbour's wife.

This affectation has passed away; and a few more years will destroy whatever yet remains of that magical potency which once belonged to the name of Byron. To us he is still a man, young, noble, and unhappy. To our children he will be merely a writer; and their impartial judgment will appoint his place among writers, without regard to his rank, or to his private history. That his poetry will undergo a severe sifting; that much of what has been admired by his contemporaries will be rejected as worthless, we have little doubt. But we have as little doubt, that, after the closest scrutiny, there will still remain much that can only perish with the English language.

SOUTHEY'S UNEDUCATED POETS.*

Mr. Southey's Introductory Essay on the Lives and Works of our Uneducated Poets is ushered in with the singular observation, that “As the age of Reason had commenced, and we were advancing with quick step in the March of Intellect, Mr. Jones would in all likelihood be the last versifier of his class; and something might properly be said of his predecessors, the poets in low life, who, with more or less good fortune, had obtained notice in their day. By the March of Intellect," in the above sentence, is meant, we presume, not merely the progress of scientific improvement, but the more general diffusion of knowledge among the poorer classes. To find this diffusion of knowledge spoken of in distasteful terms by Mr. Southey, can surprise no one who is acquainted with the writings of that gentleman. Yet even to these it must seem extraordinary to discover such reproachful expressions in a work, the tendency of which is to encourage, among the working classes, a pursuit which demands a very high degree of mental cultivation. The prediction above quoted,

Attempts in Verse, by John Jones, an old Servant; with some Account of the Writer, written by himself; and an Introductory Essay on the Lives and Works of Uneducated Poets. By Robert Southey, Esq. Poet Laureate. 8vo. London: 1831.-Vol. liv. p. 69. September, 1831.

In

that such a diffusion of knowledge is likely to prevent the future appearance of versifiers in humble life, is one which we should hardly have thought necessary to notice seriously, if it had come from a pen of less influence than Mr. Southey's. His proposition, translated into plain unfigurative language, is, that the more the poor are educated, the less are they likely to write poetry. In the first place, we disbelieve the predicted result; and, secondly, we say, that if true, it is not a subject for regret, as it is evidently considered by Mr. Southey. It seems almost a waste of words to confute so untenable a theory as that education is unfavourable to the developement of poetical talent. The rare occurrence of uneducated poets, and the wonder excited by their appearance, the indispensableness of something more than the mere rudiments of education to afford to the incipient poet a competent store of the materials with which he works, the fact, that our most distinguished poets have almost uniformly been men of studious habits, and of various and extensive reading-of which we have an example in the Laureate himself,-these are circumstances on which it is needless to enlarge-which, when heard, must be acknowledged, and when acknowledged, must convince; and we gladly close this part of an argument, in which the humblest disputant could gain no honour by confuting even the editor of the work before us. deed, it can scarcely be imagined that Mr. Southey could seriously maintain such an opinion; and that he must mean rather, that the poor who receive the advantages of education will, at the same time, learn to apply their acquirements to more useful purposes than writing verses. But there is this difficulty in such a supposition, that a reproach would thereby be cast upon the practice of versifying, which Mr. Southey is very far from intending; and it is evident, from the tone of his book, that he does not contemplate with the pleasure which it ought to afford to a benevolent mind like his, the prospect of the poorer classes being inclined to apply the fruits of their extended education to works of practical utility. We must therefore conclude, that he does not believe that the condition of the poor will be improved by such an education as will induce them to apply their acquired knowledge to purposes which are commonly called useful; but that it is better either keep them ignorant, or to give them just so much information as will encourage a developement of the imaginative or poetical part of their nature, without awakening them, more than can be helped, to any exercise of their reasoning powers. If this is not what is intended, then the praise bestowed upon uneducated poets, the encouraging complacency with which their efforts are regarded, and the sarcastic allusions to the Age of Reason and the March of Intellect, which is to arrest the progress of such commendable efforts, are utterly without a meaning.

But writer who feels so strongly as Mr. Southey, can never, even when he is least logical, be accused of writing without a meaning. Mr. Southey, both in this, and in other writings in which his ideas are more distinctly expressed, teaches us that poetry softens and humanizes the heart of man, while it is the tendency of science to harden and corrupt it. It would be useless to plead that Mr. Southey may never have expressed this sentiment in these precise words, while he has written much from which no other inference can be drawn.

According to this theory, the poor man who has a turn for versifying is likely to be more moral than one who discovers a bent for calculation or