lect, which is dramatic even in manner, | nent in his poetry. The proverb of the scene between Lucifer and Cain. old Hesiod, that half is often more The conference is animated, and each of than the whole, is eminently applicable 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 questions and the answers, the objections and the solutions, all belong to the same character. 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. A writer who showed so little dra- His descriptions, great as was their matic skill in works professedly dra- intrinsic merit, derived their principal matic was not likely to write narrative interest from the feeling which always with dramatic effect. Nothing could mingled with them. He was himself indeed be more rude and careless than the beginning, the middle, and the end, the structure of his narrative poems. of all his own poetry, the hero of every He seems to have thought, with the tale, the chief object in every landhero of the Rehearsal, that the plot was scape. Harold, Lara, Manfred, and a good for nothing but to bring in fine crowd of other characters, were unithings. His two longest works, Childe versally considered merely as loose inHarold and Don Juan, have no plan cognitos of Byron; and there is every whatever. Either of them might have reason to believe that he meant them been extended to any length, or cut to be so considered. The wonders of short at any point. The state in which the outer world, the Tagus, with the the Giaour appears illustrates the man-mighty fleets of England riding on its ner in which all Byron's 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. 66 bosom, the towers of Cintra overhanging the shaggy forest of cork-trees and willows, the glaring marble of Pentelicus, the banks of the Rhine, the glaciers of Clarens, the sweet Lake of Leman, the dell of Egeria with its summer-birds 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. It was in description and meditation that Byron excelled. Description," as he said in Don Juan, "was his forte." His manner is indeed peculiar, Never had any writer so vast a comand is almost unequalled; rapid, mand of the whole eloquence of scorn, sketchy, full of vigour; the selection misanthropy, and despair. That Mahappy, the strokes few and bold. In rah was never dry. No art could spite of the reverence which we feel sweeten, no draughts could exhaust, its for the genius of Mr. Wordsworth we perennial waters of bitterness. Never cannot but think that the minuteness was there such variety in monotony as of his descriptions often diminishes that of Byron. From maniac laughter their effect. He has accustomed him- to piercing lamentation, there was not self to gaze on nature with the eye of a single note of human anguish of a lover, to dwell on every feature, and which he was not master. Year after to mark every change of aspect. Those year, and month after month, he conbeauties which strike the most negli-tinued to repeat that to be wretched is gent observer, and those which only a the destiny of all; that to be eminently close attention discovers, are equally wretched is the destiny of the eminent; familiar to him and are equally promi- that all the desires by which we are cursed lead alike to misery, if they are not We are far, however, from think gratified, to the misery of disappointment, if they are gratified, to the misery of satiety. His 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 described 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. ing 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 life; he was, on the whole, an unhappy man. He early discovered that, by parading his unhappiness before the multitude, he produced an immense sensation. The world gave him every encouragement to talk about his mental sufferings. The interest which his first confessions excited 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, it would probably have puzzled himself How much of this morbid feeling sprang from an original disease of the mind, how much from real misfortune, how much from the nervousness of dissipation, how much was fanciful, how much was merely affected, it is impossible for us, and would probably to say. have been impossible for the most in- There can be no doubt that this retimate friends of Lord Byron, to decide.markable man owed the vast influence Whether there ever existed, or can which he exercised over his contemever exist, a person answering to the poraries at least as much to his gloomy description which he gave of himself egotism as to the real power of his may be doubted; but that he was not poetry. We never could very clearly such a person is beyond all doubt. understand how it is that egotism, so It is ridiculous to imagine that a man unpopular in conversation, should be whose mind was really imbued with so popular in writing; or how it is scorn of his fellow-creatures would that men who affect in their composihave published three or four books tions qualities and feelings which they every year in order to tell them so; have not, impose so much more easily or that a man who could say with on their contemporaries than on postetruth that he neither sought sympathy rity. The interest which the loves of nor needed it would have admitted all Petrarch excited in his own time, and Europe to hear his farewell to his wife, the pitying fondness with which half and his blessings on his child. In the Europe looked upon Rousseau, are well second canto of Childe Harold, he tells known. To readers of our age, the us that he is insensible to fame and love of Petrarch seems to have been love obloquy : of that kind which breaks no hearts, and the sufferings of Rousseau to have deserved laughter rather than pity, to have been partly counterfeited, and partly the consequences of his own perverseness and vanity. "Ill 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. What our grandchildren may think of the character of Lord Byron, as exhibited in his poetry, we will not pre thropy and voluptuousness, a system in which the two great commandments were, to hate your neighbour, and to love your neighbour's wife. tend 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 This affectation has passed away; conceived only by those who have ex- and a few more years will destroy perienced it. To people who are un-whatever yet remains of that magical acquainted with real calamity, "nothing potency which once belonged to the is so dainty sweet as lovely melan-name of Byron. To us he is still a choly." This faint image of sorrow man, young, noble, and unhappy. To has in all ages been considered by our children he will be merely a young gentlemen as an agreeable ex-writer; and their impartial judgment citement. Old gentlemen and mid- will appoint his place among writers; dle-aged gentlemen have so many without regard to his rank or to his real causes of sadness 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 Master 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 un 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. SAMUEL JOHNSON. bounded. They bought pictures of him; The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. In cluding a Journal of a Tour to the THIS work has greatly disappointed 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 Whatever faults we may have portraits. A few discarded their neck- been prepared to find in it, we fully cloths in imitation of their great leader. expected that it would be a valuable For some years the Minerva press addition to English literature; that it sent forth no novel without a myste- would contain many curious facts, and rious, unhappy, Lara-like peer. The many judicious remarks; that the number of hopeful under-graduates and style of the notes would be neat, clear, medical students who became things and precise; and that the typograof dark imaginings, on whom the fresh-phical execution would be, as in new ness of the heart ceased to fall like dew, editions of classical works it ought to whose passions had consumed them- be, almost faultless. We are sorry to selves to dust, and to whom the relief be obliged to say that the merits of of tears was denied, passes all calcula- Mr. Croker's performance are on a par tion. This was not the worst. There with those of a certain leg of mutton was created in the minds of many of on which Dr. Johnson dined, while these enthusiasts a pernicious and ab- travelling from London to Oxford, and surd association between intellectual which he, with characteristic energy, power and moral depravity. From the pronounced to be "as bad as bad poetry of Lord Byron they drew a could be, ill fed, ill killed, ill kept, and system of ethics, compounded of misan-ill dressed." This edition is ill com piled, ill arranged, ill written, and ill printed. Nothing in the work has astonished us so much as the ignorance or carelessness of Mr. Croker with respect to facts and dates. Many of his blunders are such as we should be surprised to hear any well educated gentleman commit, even in conversation. The notes absolutely swarm with misstatements, into which the editor never would have fallen, if he had taken the slightest pains to investigate the truth of his assertions, or if he had even been well acquainted with the book on which he undertook to comment. We will give a few instances. Mr. Croker tells us in a note that Derrick, who was master of the ceremonies at Bath, died very poor in 1760. * We read on; and, a few pages later, we find Dr. Johnson and Boswell talking of this same Derrick as still living and reigning, as having retrieved his character, as possessing so much power over his subjects at Bath, that his opposition might be fatal to Sheridan's lectures on oratory. † And all this is in 1763. The fact is, that Derrick died in 1769. of Marmion. Every school-girl knows the lines: Scarce had lamented Forbes paid The tribute to his Minstrel's shade; The tale of friendship scarce was told, Ere the narrator's heart was cold: Far may we search before we find A heart so manly and so kind!" In one place, we are told, that Allan Ramsay, the painter, was born in 1709, and died in 1784*; in another, that he died in 1784, in the seventy-first year of his age. † In one place, Mr. Croker says, that at the commencement of the intimacy between Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale, in 1765, the lady was twenty-five years old. In other places he says, that Mrs. Thrale's thirty-fifth year coincided with Johnson's seventieth. § Johnson was born in 1709. If, therefore, Mrs. Thrale's thirty-fifth year coincided with Johnson's seventieth, she could have been only twenty-one years old in 1765. This is not all. Mr. Croker, in another place, assigns the year 1777 as the date of the complimentary lines which Johnson made on Mrs. Thrale's thirty-fifth birth-day. || If this date be correct, Mrs. Thrale In one note we read, that Sir Her-must have been born in 1742, and could bert Croft, the author of that pompous have been only twenty-three when and foolish account of Young, which her acquaintance with Johnson comappears among the Lives of the Poets, menced. Mr. Croker therefore gives died in 1805. Another note in the us three different statements as to her same volume states, that this same Sir age. Two of the three must be inHerbert Croft died at Paris, after re- correct. We will not decide between siding abroad for fifteen years, on the them; we will only say, that the rea27th of April, 1816. § sons which Mr. Croker gives for thinking that Mrs. Thrale was exactly thirtyfive years old when Johnson was seventy, appear to us utterly frivolous. Mr. Croker informs us, that Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, the author of the Life of Beattie, died in 1816. || A Sir William Forbes undoubtedly died in that year, but not the Sir William Forbes in question, whose death took place in 1806. It is notorious, indeed, that the biographer of Beattie lived just long enough to complete the history of his friend. Eight or nine years before the date which Mr. Croker has assigned for Sir William's death, Sir Walter Scott lamented that event in the introduction to the fourth canto Again, Mr. Croker informs his readers that "Lord Mansfield survived Johnson full ten years." Lord Mansfield survived Dr. Johnson just eight years and a quarter. Johnson found in the library of a French lady, whom he visited during his short visit to Paris, some works which he regarded with great disdain. "I looked," says he, "into the books in the lady's closet, and, in contempt, showed them to Mr. Thrale. Prince some years after this affair. For this blunder there is, we must acknowledge, some excuse; for it certainly seems almost incredible to a person living in our time that any human being should ever have stooped to fight with a writer in the Morning Post. "James de Duglas," says Mr. Croker, "was requested by King Robert Bruce, in his last hours, to repair, with his heart, to Jerusalem, and humbly to deposit it at the sepulchre of our Lord, which he did in 1329."* Now, it is well known that he did no such thing, and for a very sufficient reason, because he was killed by the way. Nor was it in 1329 that he set out. Robert Bruce died in 1329, and the expedition of Douglas took place in the following year, "Quand le printems vint et la Titi, Bibliothèque des Fées, and other books." "The History of Prince Titi," observes Mr. Croker, "was said to be the autobiography of Frederick Prince of Wales, but was probably written by Ralph his secretary." A more absurd note never was penned. The history of Prince Titi, to which Mr. Croker refers, whether written by Prince Frederick or by Ralph, was certainly never published. If Mr. Croker had taken the trouble to read with attention that very passage in Park's Royal and Noble Authors which he cites as his authority, he would have seen that the manuscript was given up to the government. Even if this memoir had been printed, it is not very likely to find its way into a French lady's bookcase. And would any man in his senses speak contemp-saison," says Froissart, in June, 1330, tuously of a French lady, for having in her possession an English work, so curious and interesting as a Life of Prince Frederick, whether written by himself or by a confidential secretary, must have been? The history at which Johnson laughed was a very proper companion to the Bibliothèque des Fées, a fairy tale about good Prince Titi and naughty Prince Violent. Mr. Croker may find it in the Magasin des Enfans, the first French book which the little girls of England read to their governesses. Mr. Croker states that Mr. Henry Bate, who afterwards assumed the name of Dudley, was proprietor of the Morning Herald, and fought a duel with George Robinson Stoney, in consequence of some attacks on Lady Strathmore which appeared in that paper. † Now Mr. Bate was then connected, not with the Morning Herald, but with the Morning Post; and the dispute took place before the Morning Herald was in existence. The duel was fought in January, 1777. The Chronicle of the Annual Register for that year contains an account of the transaction, and distinctly states that Mr. Bate was editor of the Morning Post. The Morning Herald, as any person may see by looking at any number of it, was not established till * III. 271. † V.196. says Lord Hailes, whom Mr. Croker cites as the authority for his statement. Mr. Croker tells us that the great Marquis of Montrose was beheaded at Edinburgh in 1650.† There is not a forward boy at any school in England who does not know that the marquis was hanged. The account of the execution is one of the finest passages in Lord Clarendon's History. We can scarcely suppose that Mr. Croker has never read that passage; and yet we can scarcely suppose that any person who has ever perused so noble and pathetic a story can have utterly forgotten all its most striking circumstances. 66 "Lord Townshend," says Mr. Croker, was not secretary of state till 1720." Can Mr. Croker possibly be ignorant that Lord Townshend was made secretary of state at the accession of George I. in 1714, that he continued to be secretary of state till he was displaced by the intrigues of Sunderland and Stanhope at the close of 1716, and that he returned to the office of secretary of state, not in 1720, but in 1721? Mr. Croker, indeed, is generally unfortunate in his statements respecting the Townshend family. He tells us that Charles Townshend, the chancellor of the exchequer, was "nephew of the prime minister, and son of a peer who + II. 526. + III. 52. * IV. 29. |