But these were horrors-this was woe
Unmix'd with 'such-but sure and slow:
He faded, and so calm and meek,
So softly worn, so sweetly weak,
So tearless, yet so tender-kind,
And grieved for those he left behind;
With all the while a cheek whose bloom
Was as a mockery of the tomb,
Whose tints as gently sunk away
As a departing rainbow's ray-
"An eye of most transparent light,
That almost made the dungeon bright,
And not a word of murmur-not
A groan o'er his untimely lot,-
A little talk of better days,
A little hope my own to raise,
For I was sunk in silence-lost
In this last loss of all the most;
And then the sighs he would suppress
Of fainting nature's feebleness,
More slowly drawn, grew less and less:
I listened, but I could not hear-
I called, for I was wild with fear;
I knew 'twas hopeless, but my dread
Would not be thus admonished;

I called, and thought I beard a sound--
I burst my chain with one strong bound,
And rush'd to him:-I found him not,
I only stirr'd in this black spot,

I only lived-I only drew

The accursed breath of dungeon-dew;
The last-the sole-the dearest link
Between me and the eternal brink,
Which bound me to my failing race,
Was broken in this fatal place.
One on the earth, and one beneath-
My brothers-both had ceased to breathe:
I took that hand which lay so still,
Alas! my own was full as chill;
I had not strength to stir, or strive,
But felt that I was still alive
A frantic feeling, when we know
That what we love shall ne'er be so.
I know not why

I could not die,

I had no earthly hope-but faith,
And that forbade a selfish death."

It is singular that no reflection seems to have crossed the

mind of Bonnivard, that he ought to find some consolation in knowing that his brothers had been thus delivered from most loathsome suffering: his feelings, eloquently and tenderly described, are entirely selfish: the thought that the last barrier between him and the eternal brink is destroyed, is selfish also, and is taken from six lines in Swift's admirable verses on his own death. To this succeeds an incomprehensible stanza, where Bonnivard pictures his own dreary state after the death of his beloved companions: here we have "vacancy absorbing space"-" fixedness without a place"-" no stars, no earth, no time, no check-no change, no good, no crime"-" a sea of stagnant idleness," and other incongruities and impossibilities. We are afterwards informed that Bonnivard was visited by a bird, which lodged in the crevice of his prison, and which he fancifully supposed to be his brother's soul descending to cheer his loneliness, until it flew away, and left him

"Lone-as a solitary cloud,

A single cloud on a sunny day,

While all the rest of heaven is clear,
A frown upon the atmosphere,

That hath no business to appear

When skies are blue, and earth is gay."

This simile is directly borrowed from a poem by Mr. Wordsworth, beginning

"I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats aloft o'er vales and hills:"

Poems, Vol. II. p. 49, edit. 1807.

but Lord Byron has managed to expand it, by the assistance of a vulgarism, which he mistakenly imagined was in the style of his original, and "the natural language of

men."

A little further we have a pretty description of the Rhone, Lake Leman, and the bordering country, as viewed through the dungeon-grate, to which the prisoner contrived to ascend; and the poem rather abruptly ends by his unexpected release.

"At last men came and set me free

I asked not why, I reck'd not where;
It was at length the same to me
Fettered or fetterless to be

I learn'd to love despair.***

Thus concludes the longest piece in this small collection: it only fills twenty widely-printed pages, carefully eked out by the divisions of the stanzas. The rest of the poems are miscellaneous.

The principal topic upon which they are employed is that on which Lord Byron has for some time harped with great fondness, but assuredly, whatever he may pretend, not with any for the unhappy individual who is the unwilling subject of his verse we confess we are sick of this puling affectation of tenderness and feeling on the part of one, who, if he really loved the delicate and sensitive being he has deserted in more than the grief, because with none of the consolations, of widowhood, would have spared her the repeated wounds he is inflicting upon her peace: his wife is surely not the person upon whom he should vent the bad passions he even boasts to have been nourishing since his childhood; she, whom he pretended to be the object of his adoration, after the lapse of a few short months, has become the victim of his revenge: his lordship appears to have been disposto a volere per piccola vendetta, acquistar gran vergogna; and if we speak of his conduct in this respect with plainness, it is because he has not only in this instance, but by continued exposure, made his familydifferences matters of public discussion, and has laid open the sacred intercourse of domestic life to the coarse debates of smoking-rooms and pot-houses. It is not to be denied, that Lord Byron is essentially a vain man, and, if we mistake not, his vanity is not a little concerned in the productions to which our objections apply; for, independently of the knack he has acquired in writing verses, that bear the semblance at least, of pathos and delicacy of sentiment, he knows he is touching upon a matter that has unusually excited public curiosity: what he wrote, therefore, was sure of being read, and by the majority sure of being admired; for many who disapproved most of his lordship's conduct previous to his departure from England, and especially of his publication of his "Farewell" address, as inflicting a parting and a lasting pang upon his lady, thought that the lines were most delightfully pathetic, and wondered how a man, who shewed he had so little heart, could evince so much feeling. They did not know how easy it was for a person of his CRIT, REV. VOL. IV. Dec. 1816.

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lordship's skill to fabricate neatly - turned phraseology, and for a person of his lordship's ingenuity to introduce to advantage all the common-places of affection: the very excellence of that poem in these particulars, to us and to many others, was a convincing proof that its author had much more talent than tenderness. Of the same kind are the pieces now before us on this painful topic: they have elegant turns and rhymes of uncommon prettiness, but the sentiment is as superficial as the expression is factitious: what pains, for instance, have been bestowed upon the following stanzas, yet to what do they in reality amount?

"Though the rock of my last hope is shiver'd,
And its fragments are sunk in the wave,
Though I feel that my soul is deliver'd

To pain-it shall not be its slave.
There is many a pang to pursue me:

They may crush, but they shall not contemn→→
They may torture, but shall not subdue me—
"Tis of thee that I think-not of them.

"Though human, thou didst not deceive me,
Though woman, thou didst not forsake,
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,
Though slander'd, thou never could'st shake,-
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me,
Though parted, it was not to fly,

Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me,
Nor, mute, that the world might belie.

If

"Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,
Nor the war of the many with one—
my soul was not fitted to prize it
'Twas folly not sooner to shun:
And if dearly that error hath cost me,
And more than I once could foresee,
I have found that, whatever it lost me,
It could not deprive me of thee."

When his lordship's publisher gave 3,000 guineas for poems scarcely exceeding as many lines, we apprehend a considerable inducement must have been the certainty of the immense sale which pieces devoted to this painful subject would command.*

Was it not Goldsmith, who was seen hurrying to the bookseller who had bought his Deserted Village, shocked at receiving so enormous a price as half-a-crown a line for it? In these times of "unparalleled distress," Lord Byron obtains little less than one guinea per line.

"The Dream" adverts to the same theme, and in a strain, not of offensive egotism, gives a few distant glimpses into the life of the noble author: the darkness in which it has been hitherto studiously wrapped has given it an artificial dreariness, and excited an unusual curiosity; but the prospect, even with this additional light, does not look very inviting. Lord Byron first represents himself as a boy in love with a lady older than himself, who most cruelly admired another. We imagine that the following passage alludes to Childe Harold's departure on his first pilgrimage. "A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. There was an ancient mansion, and before Its walls there was a steed caparisoned: Within an antique Oratory stood

The Boy of whom I spake;-he was alone,
And pale, and pacing to and fro; anon

He sate him down, and seized a pen, and traced
Words which I could not guess of; then he lean'd
His bow'd head on his hands, and shook as 'twere
With a convulsion-then arose again,

And with his teeth and quivering hauds did tear
What he had written, but he shed no tears.
And he did calm himself, and fix his brow
Into a kind of quiet; as he paused,
The Lady of his love re-entered there,
She was serene and smiling then, and yet
She knew she was by him beloved,-she knew,
For quickly comes such knowledge, that his heart
Was darken'd with her shadow, and she saw
That he was wretched, but she saw not all.
He rose, and with a cold and gentle grasp
He took her hand; a moment o'er his face
A tablet of unutterable thoughts

Was traced, and then it faded, as it came;
He dropped the hand he held, and with slow steps
Retired, but not as bidding her adieu,

For they did part with mutual smiles; he pass'd
From out the massy gate of that old hall,
And mounting on his steed, he went his way;
And ne'er repassed that hoary threshold more."

He returns to England, finds his first love married, and unites himself to Lady Byron,-at least, such we conjecture is the interpretation of this mystery. His ardour cooling, he seems to discover a ground of complaint not hitherto disclosed, and which cannot be meant to be literally understood.