eye of fantasy at things past, at things present, and at things to come. The poem is constructed, like the image of Nebuchadnezzar's dream-of fine gold, silver, and clay. It abounds in sublime thought and low humour, in dignified feeling and malignant passion, in elegant wit and obsolete conceit. It alternately presents us with the gaiety of the ball-room, and the gloom of the scaffold-leading us among the airy pleasantries of fashionable assemblages, and suddenly conducting us to haunts of depraved and disgusting sensuality. We have scarcely time to be refreshed and soothed by the odours of flowers and bursting blossoms, the pensive silence of still waters, and the contemplation of beautiful forms, before we are terrified and horror-stricken by the ferocious clamours of tumultuous crowds, and the agonies of innocent and expiring victims. This poem turns decorum into jest, and bids defiance to the established decencies of life. It wars with virtue as resolutely as with vice."

Our next author is a pseudonymous one-the writer of a Letter to Lord Byron, by John Bull, London, 8vo. 1821. This production much excited Lord Byron's curiosity. In one of his letters to Mr. Murray he asks, "Who the devil can have done this diabolically well-written letter?" and subsequently he is found resting his suspicion (unfoundedly, no doubt,) on one of his own most intimate personal friends. We extract a few paragraphs.

XXXIV. JOHN BULL.

"Stick to Don Juan; it is the only sincere thing you have ever written; and it will live many years after all your Haroids have ceased to be, in your own words,

A school-girl's tale-the wonder of an hour.'

I consider Don Juan as out of all sight the best of your works: it is by far the most spirited, the most straightforward, the most interesting, and the most poetical; and every body thinks as I do of it, although they have.not the heart to say so. Old Gifford's brow relaxed as he gloated over it; Mr. Croker chuckled; Dr. Whitaker smirked; Mr. Milman sighed; Mr. Coleridge took it to his bed with him.

"I think the great charm of its style is, that it is not much like the style of any other poem in the world. It is utter humbug to say, that it is borrowed from the style of the Italian weavers of merry ottava rima: their merriment is nothing, because they have nothing but their merriment; yours is every thing, because it is delightfully intermingled with, and contrasted by, all manner of serious things-murder and lust included. It is also mere humbug to aceuse you of having plagiarised it from Mr. Frere's pretty and graceful little Whistlecrafts. The measure, to be sure, is the same; but then the measure is as old as the hills. But the spirit of the two poets is as different as can be. Mr. Frere writes elegantly, playfully, very like a gentleman, and a scholar, and a respectable man; and his poems never sold, nor ever will sell. Your Don Juan, again, is written strongly, lasciviously, fiercely, laughingly,-every body sees in a moment that nobody could have written it but a man of the first order, both in genius and in dissipation-a real master of all his tools-a profligate, pernicious, irresistible, charming devil; and accordingly the Don sells, and will sell, to the end of time, whether our good friend, Mr. John Murray, honour it with his imprimatur, or doth not so honour it. I will mention a book, however, from which I do think you have taken a great many hints; nay, a great many pretty full sketches, for your Juan. It is one which (with a few more) one never sees mentioned in reviews, because it is a book written on the anti-humbug principle. It is-you know it exceedingly well-it is no other than Faublas, a book which contains as much good fun as Gil Blas, or Molière; as much good luscious description as the Heloise; as much fancy and imagination as all the comedies in the English language put together, and less humbug than any one given romance that has been written since Don Quixote-a book which is to be found on the tables of roues, and in the desks of divines, and under the pillows of spinsters-a book, in a word, which is read universally-I wish I could addin the original.

"But all this has nothing to do with the charming style of Don Juan, which is entirely and inimitably your ownthe sweet, fiery, rapid, easy-beautifully easy,-anti-humbug style of Don Juan. Ten stanzas of it are worth all your

Manfred-and yet your Manfred is a noble poem, too, in is way. I had really no idea what a very clever fellow yo were till I read Don Juan. In my humble opinion, there a very little in the literature of the present day that will stand the test of half a century, except the Scotch novels of S Walter Scott, and Don Juan. They will do so because they are written with perfect facility and nature-because ther materials are all drawn from life.”

Coming once more to men with names, we present this extract from a Life of Byron, by the well-known author of The Annals of the Parish, The Provost, The Entail, Sir Andrew Wylie, Lawrie Todd, and The Member.

XXXV. GALT.

"Strong objections have been made to the moral te dency of Don Juan; but, in the opinion of many, it is Lard Byron's master-piece; and undoubtedly it displays all the varieties of his powers, combined with a quaint playfulnes not found to an equal degree in any other of his works. The serious and pathetic portions are exquisitely beautiful, the descriptions have all the distinctness of the best pictures in Childe Harold, and are, moreover, generally drawn from nature; while the satire is for the most part curiously as sociated, and sparklingly witty. The characters are sketched with amazing firmness and freedom; and, thong sometimes grotesque, are yet not often overcharged. It is professedly an epic poem, but it may be more preperly described as a poetical novel. Nor can it be said u inculcate any particular moral, or to do more than u mantle the decorum of society. Bold and buoyant through out, it exhibits a free irreverent knowledge of the worth, laughing or mocking as the thought serves, in the me unexpected antitheses to the proprieties of time, place, and circumstance.

"The object of the poem is to describe the progress of a libertine through life; not an unprincipled prodigal, whe profligacy, growing with his growth and strengths f with his strength, passes from voluptuous indulgence in the morbid sensuality of systematic debauchery; but i young gentleman who, whirled by the vigour and of his animal spirits into a world of adventures, in vid his stars are chiefly in fault for his liaisons, settles it h into an honourable lawgiver, a moral speaker on érure bills, and possibly a subscriber to the Society for the pression of Vice."

Next to Mr. Galt we place the amiable and mane Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges, Baronet, of De tou and Lee Priory, Kent, author of Mary Cliff the Censura Literaria, the Autobiography of Clas ing, etc. etc. etc.

XXXVI. BRYDGES.

"If I could not have the poetry of Lord Byron without the cost of its countervailing objections, I would still desire have it in spite of the price. I am afraid that it was tertwined so deeply, that the separation was scarcely po sible. I do not think that more modified energies wold have produced it. Habits of modification tend to cauti and to timidity. There is a responsibility which encha vigour, and sits heavy upon hope. No being loves liber like the Muse: but it may be said, that she ought not th love licentiousness! She must, however, be left to exerte the one or the other at her peril. Unfortunately, in let Byron's case, she sometimes passed the bounds; less often. however, than is supposed.

"Don Juan is, no doubt, very licentious in parts, which renders it dangerous to praise it very much; and make improper for those who have not a cool and correct judg ment, and cannot separate the objectionable parts from t numerous beautiful passages intermixed. But nowhere is the poet's mind more elastic, free, and vigorous, and ha knowledge of human nature more surprising.

"It has all sorts of faults, many of which cannot be tr fended, and some of which are disgusting; but it bas, al. almost every sort of poetical merit: there are in it some of finest passages which Lord Byron ever wrote; there is amata knowledge of human nature in it; there is exquisite bumorn there is freedom, and bound, and vigour of narrative, ins ry, sentiment, and style, which are admirable; there vast fertility of deep, extensive, and original thought, a at the same time, there is the profusion of a prompt 1st

tics, which on several occasions assumed a tone menacing and contemptuous to the constitution of his country; while, in fact, Lord Byron was in his own heart sufficiently sensible, not only of his privileges as a Briton, but of the distinction attending his high birth and rank, and was peculiarly sensitive of those shades which constitute what is termed the manners of a gentleman.

"As various in composition as Shakspeare himself (this will be admitted by all who are acquainted with his Don Juan), he has embraced every topic of human life, and sounded every string on the divine harp, from its slight. est to its most powerful and heart-astounding tones. There is scarce a passion or a situation which has escaped his pen; and he might be drawn, like Garrick, between the weeping and the laughing Muse, although his most powerful efforts have certainly been devoted to Melpomene. His genius seemed as prolific as various. The most prodigal use did not exhaust his powers, nay, seemed rather to increase their vigour. Neither Childe Harold, nor any of the most beautiful of Byron's earlier tales, contain more exquisite morsels of poetry than are to be found scattered through the cantos of Don Juan, amidst verses which the author appears to have thrown off with an effort as spontaneous as that of a tree resigning its leaves to the wind. But that noble tree will never more bear fruit or blossom! It has been cut down in its strength, and the past is all that remains to us of Byron. We can scarce reconcile ourselves to the idea-scarce think that the voice is silent for ever, which, bursting so often on our ear, was often heard with rapturous admiration, sometimes with regret, but always with the deepest interest:

'All that's bright must fade,

The brightest still the fleetest!'

With a strong feeling of awful sorrow, we take leave of the subject. Death creeps upon our most serious as well as upon our most idle employments; and it is a reflection solemn and gratifying, that he found our Byron in no moment of levity, but contributing his fortune, and hazarding his life, in behalf of a people only endeared to him by their own past glories, and as fellow-creatures suffering under the yoke of a heathen oppressor. To have fallen in a crusade for Freedom and Humanity, as in olden times it would have been an atonement for the blackest crimes, may in the present be allowed to expiate greater follies than even exagge. rating calumny has propagated against Byron."

XXXIX. COLTON,―iterum.

On referring to the Notices we have given, we perceive that we have been too brief in our extracts from this tasteful and discriminating critic; we cannot conclude these reviews better than by the following further selection from his Remarks on Don Juan.

"This story combines within itself every capability for the display of genius, and allows the fullest scope to his Lordship's most versatile and extraordinary powers. Here, therefore, is selfishness, for his sarcasms; love, for his licentiousness; superstition, for his ribaldry; and danger, despair,

and death, for his sublimities.

Quicquid habent Veneres Venerum, Charitesve Leporûm;
Quicquid Musa Joci, quicquid Apollo Salis,'

Words that breathe, and thoughts that burn;' all that is attractive, or terrible, or revolting, is here scattered before us, with the most prodigal vivacity of youth, and the profoundest experience of age. Much is misapplied, still more is misplaced; but omnipotent genius presides over this chaos of wonders, and, secure in her own resources, despises alike the censure and the praise of those who are permitted to see, rather than to comprehend, the marvellous creations of her will. The story of the shipwreck, in fact, is a principal feature in the poem; and his Lordship fully feels all the capabilities of such a story, and screws all his powers to the sticking-place. The consequence is, that he has produced some stanzas that no one but himself could, and some that no one but himself would, have written. Amidst a mass of much that we shall not dare to quote, and much more that we will not presume to defend, it is, nevertheless, the duty of every candid inquirer, while he enforces every well-founded accusation, or objection, to clear the object of his examination from all that are not so. Now it has been said, that many of the scenes in this story of the shipwreck are out of nature, that they are too horrible, too

disgusting, and too degrading for reality; that it is a caricature, rather than a picture. But there are few who will deny that the great Cardinal de Retz was a very close and profound observer of human nature, and that he was not more remarkable for sagacity than for truth. It is curious that he very narrowly escaped shipwreck, with a crew composed of the same materials, and under a situation and circumstances very similar to those described by Lard Byron. I shall quote his account of that event, which was real, in order that my readers may compare it with the si milar event in the poem, which is fictitious.

"The Cardinal, after having passed the boisterous Gulf of Lyons, left Porto Vecchio, during the night, in the course of which, he says, 'We were attacked with, perhaps, the greatest storm that ever was seen at sea. The Pilot in Chief of the galleys of Naples, who was on board of us, and who had used the sea for fifty years, said that he had never seen the like. Every body were at their prayers, or were con fessing themselves, and none but Don Ferdinand Carillo, whe received the communion every day when he was on shore, and who was a gentleman of an exemplary piety, forbore showing any forwardness to prostrate himself at the feet of the priests. He left others at liberty to do what they pleased, but he kept himself quiet, and he whispered these words in my ear, I am much afraid that all these confessions, extorted only by fear, are nought.' He remained all along upon the deck, giving his orders with surprising coolness, and heartening, but mildly and civilly, an old soldier, who appeared a little frightened.

"It must be allowed, that a shipwreck is an event calculated to call forth all that is good, and all that is bad, in post human nature; which our operator has here spread out be fore us, on his dissecting table, but without the common decency of a napkin, or the usual precautions of aromatics. He handles, with equal indifference, the scalping-knife or scalpel, the saw or the lancet; and having transported us into the very recesses of his laboratory, with the magic wand of Shakspeare, he proceeds to examine its most dis gusting contents, with the scrutinizing microscope of Crabhe. Other anatomists cut up the dead for the future benefit and cure of the living; but our present Drawcansir will not even pause to inquire whether the breath be out of the body, or in the body, but he cuts up both the dead and the living, and cares not whether either are benefited by the operation, or neither. All he seems determined to do, is to show as both the outside and the inside of man; and if this can be effected better by laying bare a living heart than a dead one, the horror and the cruelty of the experiment, weigh no more in the metaphysical balance of our operator, than in the scales of Shylock. Horace has observed, that he that first committed himself to the terrors of the sea, required a breast of threefold brass; robur et æs triplex,' but to rend Lord Byron's picture of a shipwreck, without shuddering, will require a heart of harder materials. It is perhaps the most harrowing description in language, of the most horrid scene in life. He that sympathises is allowed no skreen; he that suffers, no pillow; even that very pride which sup ports us in our bitterest misfortunes, here lies stabbed and bleeding at our feet, covered with its own gore, and the filth of its dying but less dignified associates. All that is contemptible in folly, or mean in fear, or selfish in vice, or desperate in death, is here detailed and presented, with the discriminating minuteness of a Hogarth, and the stern sub limity of a Salvator. But, with the resistless grapple of gigantic talent, he holds us to the scene, although we would gladly fly both from the poet, and from ourselves. If our infirmities soar, he can pounce them; if they creep, he can i mouse them; and having disgusted us by one effort, he rises, like Antæus, the stronger from his fall, and the higher from his degradation.

"Had Lord Byron been previously unknown to the public, it would have been much more advisable to have permitted Don Juan to have floated unnoticed down the stream, upon the principle of Tacitus, spreta ecolescunt.' But it is highly probable that Lord Byron has four times the num ber of readers that Pope could ever boast of, even at the summit of his popularity. Lord Byron has been so often and so constantly before us, and his claims to our attention have been so many, and so great, that it is very improbable any dissertation on his writings should increase the public curiosity-quite impossible that it should extinguish it.

"Now the first impression that will be made on a general survey of all that his Lordship has written, will be the total want of that sincerity of feeling in himself, which he so successfully labours to excite in his readers. But the conse

quence of this is, that his Muse, like some of her own heroines, takes our hearts with far more ease than she keeps them. He has, however, such confidence in his own powers, that he reverses the rule of Horace, Si vis me flere,' etc. and not only makes us weep without weeping himself, but laughs in our face for doing so. He must abstain from these contradictions, or his poetical dynasty, like the political one of Alexander, will be more extensive than durable. The heavenborn enthusiasm, the pure and lofty aspirations, so characteristic of the genuine poet, are feigned by him rather than felt, and assumed rather than inspired. That the illusion is admirably kept up and sustained, his readers must willingly concede; but the composition after all is artificial, and has much of the brilliance, but little of the worth of the diamond. I will not insult the understanding of the public, by quoting passages in support of the above proposition; the task would be both needless and endless; it would be neither more nor less than to cite the one half of his works, in opposition to the other. Those who choose to amuse themselves, by pursuing such comparisons, may find that there is hardly a subject that his Lordship has not honoured both with his scurrilities and his sublimities. He can play either tragedy, comedy, or farce, like an actor, or defend either vice or virtue, like a counsellor, without being very seriously affected either by the one, or by the other. His Lordship's Muse, like Lucifer, can indeed at times assume the appearance of an angel of light; like Him, she can impose upon the centinels, and intrude into Paradise, only to blaspheme, to tempt, and to destroy."

In a little journal conducted by the great poet of Germany, Goethe, and entitled Kunst und Alterthum, i. e. "Art and Antiquity," (Part III. 1821), there appeared a translation into German of part of the first canto of Don Juan, with some remarks on the poem, by the venerable Editor, of which we next submit a specimen :

XL. GOETHE.

"Don Juan is a thoroughly genial work-misanthropical to the bitterest savageness, tender to the most exquisite delicacy of sweet feelings; and when we once understand and appreciate the author, and make up our minds not fretfully and vainly to wish him other than he is, it is impossible not to enjoy what he chooses to pour out before us with such unbounded audacity-with such utter recklessness. The technical execution of the verse is in every respect answerable to the strange wild simplicity of the conception and plan: the poet no more thinks of polishing his phrase, than he does of flattering his kind; and yet, when we examine the piece more narrowly, we feel that English poetry is in possession of what the German has never attained, a classically elegant comic style....

"If I am blamed for recommending this work for translation-for throwing out hints which may serve to introduce so immoral a performance among a quiet and uncorrupted nation-I answer, that I really do not perceive any likelihood of our virtue's sustaining serious damage in this way: poets and romancers, bad as they may be, have not yet learned to be more pernicious than the daily newspapers which lie on every table."

After Scott and Goethe, we should be sorry to quote anybody but Lord Byron himself. In Mr. Kennedy's account of his Conversations with the noble poet at Cephalonia, a few weeks before his death, we find the following passage,—with which let these prolegomena conclude.

XLI. BYRON ipse (apud Kennedy).

"I cannot," said Lord Byron, "conceive why people will always mix up my own character and opinions with those of the imaginary beings which, as a poet, I have the right and liberty to draw."

"They certainly," said I, "do not spare your Lordship in that respect; and in Childe Harold, Lara, the Giaour, and Don Juan, they are too much disposed to think that you paint, in many costumes, yourself, and that these characters are only the vehicles for the expression of your own senti. ments and feelings."

"They do me great injustice," he replied, "and what was never before done to any poet. Even in Don Juan I have been equally misunderstood. I take a vicious and unprin.

cipled character, and lead him through those ranks of society, whose high external accomplishments cover and cloak internal and secret vices, and I paint the natural effects of such characters; and certainly they are not so highly coloured as we find them in real life."

"This may be true; but the question is, what are your motives and object for painting nothing but scenes of vice and folly?""To remove the cloak which the manners and maxims of society," said his Lordship, "throw over their secret sins, and show them to the world as they really are."

POSTSCRIPT. We had intended to stop with the above-but after it was too late to derange the order of our earlier testimonies, our attention was solicited to a sportive effusion by the learned Dr. William Maginn, of Trinity College, Dublin, which appears to us not unworthy of being transferred to this olla podrida. Every one ought to have, but every one has not, by heart Wordsworth's Yarrow Unvisited; therefore we shall place the original alongside of the parody.

"There's Gala Water, Leader Haughs,
Both lying right before us;
And Dryborough, where with chiming
Tweed

The lintwhites sing in chorus;
There's pleasant Teviot Dale, a land
Made blithe with plough and harrow:
Why throw away a needful day
To go in search of Yarrow?"
"What's Yarrow but a river bare,
That glides the dark hills under?"
There are a thousand such elsewhere
As worthy of your wonder,"
-Strange words they seem'd of slight
and scorn.

My true-love sigh'd for sorrow; And look'd me in the face, to think, I thus could speak of Yarrow!

"O! green," said I,"are Yarrow's holms,
And sweet is Yarrow flowing!
Fair hangs the apple frae the rock,
But we will leave it growing.
O'er billy path, and open strath,

We'll wander Scotland thorough; But, though so near, we will not turn Into the Dale of Yarrow.

DON JUAN UNREAD (1819.)

Of Corinth Castle we had read

The amazing Siege unravell'd, Had swallow'd Lara and the Giaour, And with Childe Harold travell'd; And so we follow'd Cloven-foot, And faithfully as any, Until he cried," Come turn aside, And read of Don Giovanni."

"Let Whiggish folk frae Holland House
Who have been lying, prating,
Read Don Giovanni, 'tis their own;
A child of their creating!
On jests profane they love to feed,
And there they are-and many!
But we, who link not with the crew,
Regard not Don Giovanni.

"There's Godwin's daughter, Shelley's
A writing fearful stories; (wile,
There's Hazlitt, who, with Hunt and
Keats,

Brays forth in Cockney chorus; There's pleasant Thomas Moore, a lad Who sings of Rose and Fanny: Why throw away these wits so gay To take up Don Giovanni?

« What's Juan but a shameless tale, That bursts all rules asunder? There are a thousand such elsewhere As worthy of your wonder." Strange words they seem'd of slight and scorn;

His lordship look'd not canny; And took a pinch of snuff, to think I flouted Don Giovanni!

"O! rich," said I," are Juan's rhymes,
And warm its verse is flowing!
Fair crops of blasphemy it bears,
But we will leave them growing;
In Pindar's strain, in prose of Paine,
And many another zany,
As gross we read, so where's the need
To wade through Don Giovanni?

"Let Colburn's town-bred cattle snuff
The sweets of Lady Morgan;
Let Maturin tu amorous themes
Attune his barrel-organ!
We will not read them, will not bear
The parson or the granny;
And, I dare say, as bad as they,
Or worse, is Don Giovanni.