of Gight, an Aberdeenshire heiress. The lady's fortune was soon squandered by her profligate husband, and she retired to the city of Aberdeen, to bring up her son on a reduced income of about £130 per annum. The little lame boy, endeared to all in spite of his mischief, succeeded his grand-uncle, William Lord Byron, in his eleventh year; and the happy mother sold off her effects (which realised just £74, 178. 4d.), and left Aberdeen for Newstead Abbey. The seat of the Byrons was a large and ancient, but dilapidated structure, founded as a priory in the twelfth century by Henry II., and situated in the midst of the fertile and interesting district once known as Sherwood Forest. On the dissolution of the monasteries, it was conferred by Henry VIII. on Sir John Byron, steward of Manchester and Rochdale, who converted the venerable convent into a castellated mansion. The family was ennobled by Charles I., in consequence of high and honourable services rendered to the royal cause during the civil war. On succeeding to the title, Byron was put to a private school at Dulwich, and from thence he was sent to Harrow. During his minority, the estate was let to another party, but its youthful lord occasionally visited the seat of his ancestors; and whilst there in 1803, he conceived a passion for a young lady in the neighbourhood, who, under the name of Mary Chaworth, has obtained a poetical immortality. So early as his eighth year, Byron fell in love with a simple Scottish maiden, Mary Duff; and hearing of her marriage, several years afterwards, was, he says, like a thunder-stroke to him. He had also been captivated with a boyish love for his cousin, Margaret Parker, one of the most beautiful of evanescent beings,' who died about a year or two afterwards. He was fifteen when he met Mary Chaworth, and 'conceived an attachment which, young as he was even then for such a feeling, sunk so deep into his mind as to give a colour to all his future life.' The father of the lady had been killed in a duel by Lord Byron, the eccentric grand-uncle of the poet, and the union of the young peer with the heiress of Annesley Hall would,' said Byron, 'have healed feuds in which blood had been shed by our fathers; it would have joined lands broad and rich; it would have joined at least one heart, and two persons not ill matched in years (she was two years my elder), and-andand-what has been the result?' Mary Chaworth saw little in the lame boy, and became the betrothed of another. They had one parting interview in the following year, which, in his poem of the Dream, Byron has described in the most exquisite colours of descriptive poetry: I saw two beings in the hues of youth But a most living landscape, and the wave This boyish idolatry nursed the spirit of poetry in Byron's mind. He was recalled, however, from his day-dreams and disappointment, by his removal to Trinity college, Cambridge, in October 1805. At Harrow he had been an idle irregular scholar, though he eagerly devoured all sorts of learning, excepting that which was prescribed for him; and at Cambridge he pursued the same desultory course of study. In 1807 appeared his first volume of poetry, printed at Newark, under the title of Hours of Idleness. There were indications of genius in the collection, and the successive cantos of Don Juan' betrayed the downward course of the poet's habits. The wit and knowledge of that wonderful poem-its passion, variety, and originality-were now debased with inferior matter; and the world saw with rejoicing the poet break away from his Circean enchantments, and enter upon a new and nobler field of exertion. He had sympathised deeply with the Italian Carbonari in their efforts for freedom, but a still more interesting country and people claimed his support. His youthful travels and poetical enthusiasm still endeared the blue Olympus' to his recollection, and in the summer of 1823 he set sail for Greece, to aid in the struggle for its independence. His arrangements were made with judgment, as well as generosity. Byron knew mankind well, and his plans for the recovery and regeneration of Greece evinced a spirit of patriotic freedom and warm sympathy with the oppressed, happily tempered with practical wisdom and discretion. He arrived, after some danger and delay, at Missolonghi, in Western Greece, on the 4th of January 1824. All was discord and confusion -a military mob and contending chiefs-turbulence, rapacity, and fraud. In three months he had done much, by his influence and money, to compose differences, repress cruelty, and introduce order. His fluctuating and uncertain health, however, gave way under so severe a discipline. On the 9th of April he was overtaken by a heavy shower whilst taking his daily ride, and an attack of fever and rheumatism followed. Prompt and copious bleeding but many errors of taste and judgment. The vulnerable points were fiercely assailed, the merits overlooked, in a witty critique in the Edinburgh Review (understood to be written by Lord Brougham), and the young poet replied by his vigorous satire, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, which disarmed, if it did not discomfit, his opponent. While his name was thus rising in renown, Byron left England for a course of foreign travel, and in two years visited the classic shores of the Mediterranean, and resided some time in Greece and Turkey. In the spring of 1812 appeared the two first cantos of Childe Harold, the fruit of his foreign wanderings, and his splendidly enriched and matured poetical taste. I awoke one morning,' he said, and found myself famous.' A rapid succession of eastern tales followed-the Giaour and the Bride of Abydos in 1813; the Corsair and Lara in 1814. In the Childe, he had shown his mastery over the complicated Spenserian stanza: in these he adopted the heroic couplet, and the lighter verse of Scott, with equal freedom and success. No poet had ever more command of the stores of the English language. At this auspicious and exultant period, Byron was the idol of the gay circles of London. He indulged in all their pleasures and excesses-studying by fits and starts at midnight, to maintain the splendour of his reputation. Satiety and disgust succeeded to this round of heartless pleasures, and in a better mood, though without any fixed attachment, he proposed and was accepted in marriage by a northern heiress, Miss Milbanke, daughter of Sir Ralph Mil-might have subdued the inflammation, but to this banke, a baronet in the county of Durham. The union cast a shade on his hitherto bright career. A twelvemonth's extravagance, embarrassments, and misunderstandings, dissolved the union, and the lady retired to the country seat of her parents from the discord and perplexity of her own home. She refused, like the wife of Milton, to return, and the world of England seemed to applaud her resolution. One child (now the Countess of Lovelace) was the fruit of this unhappy marriage. Before the separation took place, Byron's muse, which had been lulled or deadened by the comparative calm of domestic life, was stimulated to activity by his deepening misfortunes, and he produced the Siege of Corinth and Parisina. Miserable, reckless, yet conscious of his own newly-awakened strength, Byron left England remedy Byron was strongly opposed. It was at length resorted to after seven days of increasing fever, but the disease was then too powerful for remedy. The patient sank into a state of lethargy, and, though conscious of approaching death, could only mutter some indistinct expressions about his wife, his sister, and child. He lay insensible for twenty-four hours, and, opening his eyes for a moment, shut them for ever, and expired on the evening of the 19th of April 1824. The people of Greece publicly mourned for the irreparable loss they had sustained, and the sentiment of grief was soon conveyed to the poet's native country, where his name was still a talisman, and his early death was felt by all as a personal calamity. The body of Byron was brought to England, and after lying in state in London, was interred in the family vault in the village church of Hucknall, near Newstead. Once more upon the waters, yet once more!— Byron has been sometimes compared with Burns. and visiting France and Brussels, pursued his course Death and genius have levelled mere external disalong the Rhine to Geneva. Here, in six months, tinctions, and the peer and peasant stand on the he had composed the third canto of Childe Harold,' same elevation, to meet the gaze and scrutiny of and the Prisoner of Chillon. His mental energy posterity. Both wrote directly from strong personal gathered force from the loneliness of his situation, feelings and impulses; both were the slaves of irreand his disgust with his native country. The scenery gular, uncontrolled passion, and the prey of disapof Switzerland and Italy next breathed its inspi- pointed hopes and constitutional melancholy; and ration: Manfred and the Lament of Tasso were both died, after a life of extraordinary intellectual produced in 1817. In the following year, whilst activity and excitement, at the same early age. We residing chiefly at Venice, and making one memor- allow for the errors of Burns's position, and Byron's able visit to Rome, he completed Childe Harold,' demands a not less tender and candid construction. and threw off his light humorous poem of Beppo, Neglected in his youth-thwarted in his first love the first fruits of the more easy and genial manners-left without control or domestic influence when of the continent on his excitable temperament. his passions were strongestAt Venice, and afterwards at Ravenna, Byron reLord of himself, that heritage of woided till 1821, writing various works-Mazeppa, the first five cantos of Don Juan, and his dramas intoxicated with early success and the incense of of Marino Faliero, Sardanapalus, the Two Foscari, almost universal admiration, his irregularities must Werner, Cain, the Deformed Transformed, &c. The be regarded more with pity than reprehension. year 1822 he passed chiefly at Pisa, continuing 'Don After his unhappy marriage, the picture is clouded Juan,' which ultimately extended to fifteen cantos. with darker shadows. The wild license of his conWe have not touched on his private history or in-tinental life it would be impossible to justify. His dulgences. His genius had begun to pale its fire: excesses became habitual, and impaired both his his dramas were stiff, declamatory, and undramatic; genius and his strength. He struggled on with The genius of Byron was as versatile as it was energetic. Childe Harold' and 'Don Juan' are perhaps the greatest poetical works of this century, and in the noble poet's tales and minor poems there is a grace, an interest, and romantic picturesqueness, that render them peculiarly fascinating to youthful readers. The 'Giaour' has passages of still higher description and feeling-particularly that fine burst on modern Greece contrasted with its ancient glory, and the exquisitely pathetic and beautiful comparison of the same country to the human frame bereft of life : [Picture of Modern Greece.] He who hath bent him o'er the dead, Have swept the lines where beauty lingers, That fires not-wins not-weeps not-now- Hers is the loveliness in death, A gilded halo hovering round decay, The farewell beam of Feeling past away! Spark of that flame-perchance of heavenly birthWhich gleams-but warms no more its cherished earth! The 'Prisoner of Chillon' is also natural and affecting: the story is painful and hopeless, but it is told with inimitable tenderness and simplicity. The reality of the scenes in 'Don Juan' must strike every reader. Byron, it is well known, took pains to collect his materials. His account of the shipwreck is drawn from narratives of actual occurrences, and his Grecian pictures, feasts, dresses, and holiday pastimes, are literal transcripts from life. Coleridge thought the character of Lambro, and especially the description of his return, the finest of all Byron's efforts: it is more dramatic and life-like than any other of his numerous paintings. Haidee is also the most captivating of all his heroines. His Gulnares and Medoras, his corsairs and dark mysterious personages Linked with one virtue and a thousand crimesare monstrosities in nature, and do not possess one tithe of the interest or permanent poetical beauty that centres in the lonely residence in the Cyclades. The English descriptions in Juan are also far inferior. There is a palpable falling off in poetical power, and the peculiar prejudices and forced illnatured satire of the poet are brought prominently forward. Yet even here we have occasionally a flash of the early light that 'led astray.' The sketch of Aurora Raby is graceful and interesting (compared with Haidee, it is something like Fielding's Amelia coming after Sophia Western), and Newstead Abbey is described with a clearness and beauty not unworthy the author of 'Childe Harold.' The Epicurean philosophy of the Childe is visible in every page of Don Juan,' but it is no longer grave, dignified, and misanthropical: it is mixed up with wit, humour, the keenest penetration, and the most astonishing variety of expression, from colloquial carelessness and ease, to the highest and deepest tones of the lyre. The poet has the power of Mephistophiles over the scenes and passions of human life and society-disclosing their secret workings, and stripping them of all conventional allurements and disguises. Unfortunately, his knowledge is more of evil than of good. The distinctions between virtue and vice had been broken down or obscured in his own mind, and they are undistinguishable in 'Don Juan.' Early sensuality had tainted his whole nature. He portrays generous emotions and moral feelings -distress, suffering, and pathos-and then dashes them with burlesque humour, wild profanity, and unseasonable merriment. In 'Childe Harold' we have none of this moral anatomy, or its accompanying licentiousness; but there is abundance of scorn and defiance of the ordinary pursuits and ambition of mankind. The fairest portions of the earth are traversed in a spirit of bitterness and desolation by one satiated with pleasure, contemning society, the victim of a dreary and hopeless scepticism. Such a character would have been repulsive if the poem had not been adorned with the graces of animated description and original and striking sentiment. The poet's sketches of Spanish and Grecian scenery, and his glimpses of the life and manners of the classic mountaineers, are as true as were ever transferred to canvass; and the meditations of the Pilgrim on the particular events which adorned or cursed the soil he trod, are marked with fervour and sublimity. Thus, on the field of Albuera, he conjures up an image of war, one of the noblest creations in poetry :— [Image of War.] Hark! heard you not those hoofs of dreadful note? Red Battle stamps his foot, and nations feel the shock. Lo! where the giant on the mountain stands, His blood-red tresses deepening in the sun, With death-shot glowing in his fiery hands, And eye that scorcheth all it glares upon. Restless it rolls, now fixed, and now anon Flashing afar-and at his iron feet Destruction cowers to mark what deeds are done; For on this morn three potent nations meet, To shed before his shrine the blood he deems most sweet. In surveying the ruins of Athens, the spirit of Byron soars to its loftiest flight, picturing its fallen glories, and indulging in the most touching and magnificent strain of his sceptical philosophy First in the race that led to Glory's goal, They won, and passed away-is this the whole ? A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour! The warrior's weapon, and the sophist's stole, Are sought in vain, and o'er each mouldering tower, Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power. Son of the morning, rise! approach you here! Bound to the earth, he lifts his eye to heaven- Or burst the vanished hero's lofty mound: Look on its broken arch, its ruined wall, Well didst thou speak, Athena's wisest son! The third canto of 'Childe Harold' is more deeply imbued with a love of nature than any of his previous productions. A new power had been imparted to him on the shores of the 'Leman lake.' He had just escaped from the strife of London and his own domestic unhappiness, and his conversations with Shelley might also have turned him more strongly to this pure poetical source. An evening scene by the side of the lake is thus exquisitely described:It is the hush of night; and all between Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear, Mellowed and mingling, yet distinctly seenSave darkened Jura, whose capped heights appear Precipitously steep; and drawing near, There breathes a living fragrance from the shore, Of flowers yet fresh with childhood: on the ear Drops the light drip of the suspended oar, Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more; He is an evening reveller, who makes His life an infancy, and sings his fill! At intervals, some bird from out the brakes, Starts into voice a moment-then is still. There seems a floating whisper on the hillBut that is fancy, for the star-light dews All silently their tears of love instil, Weeping themselves away, till they infuse Deep into nature's breast the spirit of her hues. A forcible contrast to this still scene is then given in a brief description of the same landscape during a thunder storm : The sky is changed!-and such a change! Oh night, And this is in the night: most glorious night! How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea, And the big rain comes dancing to the earth! And now again 'tis black-and now the glee Of the loud hill shakes with its mountain-mirth, As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth. In the fourth canto there is a greater throng of images and objects. The poet opens with a sketch of the peculiar beauty and departed greatness of Venice, rising from the sea, with her tiara of proud towers' in airy distance. He then resumes his pilgrimage-moralises on the scenes of Petrarch and Tasso, Dante and Boccaccio-and visits the lake of Thrasimene and the temple of Clitumnus. His verses on the latter have never been surpassed [Temple of Clitumnus.] : But thou, Clitumnus! in thy sweetest wave A mirror and a bath for Beauty's youngest daughters! Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps Thy current's calmness; oft from out it leaps The finny darter with the glittering scales, Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps; While, chance, some scattered water-lily sails Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales. The Greek statues at Florence are then inimitably described, after which the poet visits Rome, and revels in the ruins of the Palatine and Coliseum, and the glorious remains of ancient art. His dreams of love and beauty, of intellectual power and majesty, are here realised. The lustre of the classic age seems reflected back in his glowing pages, and we feel that in this intense appreciation of ideal beauty and sculptured grace-in passionate energy and ecstacy-Byron outstrips all his contemporaries. The poem concludes abruptly with an apostrophe to the sea, his joy of youthful sports,' and a source of lofty enthusiasm and pleasure in his solitary wanderings on the shores of Italy and Greece. The greatness of Byron's genius is seen in Childe Harold'its tenderness in the tales and smaller poems-its rich variety in Don Juan.' A brighter garland few poets can hope to wear-yet it wants the unfading flowers of hope and virtue! [The Gladiator.] The seal is set.-Now welcome, thou dread power! Nameless, yet thus omnipotent, which here Walk'st in the shadow of the midnight hour With a deep awe, yet all distinct from fear; Thy haunts are ever where the dead walls rear Their ivy mantles, and the solemn scene Derives from thee a sense so deep and clear, That we become a part of what has been, And grow unto the spot, all-seeing, but unseen. And here the buzz of eager nations ran, In murmured pity, or loud-roared applause, As man was slaughtered by his fellow-man. And wherefore slaughtered? wherefore, but because Such were the bloody circus' genial laws, And the imperial pleasure. Wherefore not? What matters where we fall to fill the maws Of worms-on battle-plains or listed spot? Both are but theatres where the chief actors rot. There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not man the less, but nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the universe, and feel What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal. Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean-roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; Man marks the earth with ruin-his control Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groanWithout a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown. His steps are not upon thy paths-thy fields Are not a spoil for him-thou dost arise And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, The armaments which thunderstrike the walls Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee - Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form |