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chivalrous times. The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Murmion (1808), The Lady of the Lake (1810), and The Lord of the Isles (1814), refer to various periods of Scottish history; while Rokeby (1812), is a tale of the English civil wars of the seventeenth century. These poems were received with an avidity for which there was no parallel in English literary history, twenty-five thousand copies of the first being sold in six years.

The verse adopted by Mr Scott was a short irregular measure, similar to that of the early minstrels, of whose works, indeed, his might be styled a kind of revival or imitation. This verse he wrote with singular fluency and animation, though not without the occasional admission of a bald and ineffective stanza. As a strictly narrative poet, he did not attempt to melt the feelings like Campbell, or to awaken meditative thought like Wordsworth, or to lead the mind into wild and supernatural regions like Southey; he only endeavoured to entertain the great bulk of mankind with such a relation of probable, though romantic events, as they might be supposed capable of appreciating. The poetry of his writings expressly consists in the feeling which he excites in association with those events-a feeling of admiration and wonder, which we are apt to entertain for everything connected with the past, but especially for the former circumstances of that which is still before our eyes. He perceived that the romantic periods of Scottish history were not yet so remote as to have lost their interest-that, indeed, the country still contained communities who bore, in their language, dress, and ideas, the most vivid traces of a former and ruder state of things; and it was by a judicious use of the materials thus furnished to him, and by a skilful reference from the past to the present, and from the present to the past, that he succeeded so well in his poetical undertakings. He was also much indebted to his extraordinary power of description, a talent which was never possessed in a superior degree by any poet.

Mr Scott was beginning to experience a slight decline

of popularity, when his reputation was nearly altogether eclipsed by that of LORD BYRON (1788-1824), who, after some early and less happy efforts, published the first canto of his Childe Harold's Pilgrimage in 1812, and immediately took the first place in the ranks of the poets. The narrative of this poem describes a young libertine, who, satiated with pleasure, and sunk in listlessness and misanthropy, endeavours to solace himself by wandering into foreign countries. It is constructed in the Spenserian stanza, which suits admirably well with the sombre and contemplative character of the poem. The splendid descriptions and noble meditations contained in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, and the supposed identity of the hero with the poet, excited at once admiration and curiosity. It was followed by poems entitled The Giaour and The Bride of Abydos (1813), The Corsair and Lara (1814), Hebrew Melodies and The Siege of Corinth (1815), a third canto of Childe Harold and The Prisoner of Chillon (1816), Manfred, a dramatic poem, and The Lament of Tasso (1817), a fourth and concluding canto of Childe Harold, and Beppo, a comic tale of modern Italian life (1818), Mazeppa, and the commencement of a licentious, but witty and humorous tale, entitled Don Juan (1819); after which he chiefly employed himself in writing dramatic poetry, and in extending the poem last mentioned, which ultimately was broken off at the sixteenth canto. The personal character of Lord Byron was an extraordinary mixture of benevolence and misanthropy, and of aspirations after excellence, with a practical enslavement to degrading vices. The only key to the mystery is to be found in that theory which represents the temperament of genius, in its extreme forms, as a species of insanity.

The poetry of Byron may be generally described as a representation of his own turbid feelings, sometimes in his own person, and sometimes in the persons of ideal characters; all of whom, however, resemble himself. To use the words of a distinguished critic,-he delights in the delineation of a certain morbid exaltation of character and

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of feeling-a sort of demoniacal sublimity. He is haunted almost perpetually with the image of a being feeding upon, and fed by violent passions, and the recollections of the catastrophes they have occasioned; and, though worn out by their past indulgence, unable to sustain the burden of an existence which they do not continue to animate-full of pride and revenge and obstinacy, disdaining life and death, and mankind and himself, and trampling in his scorn, not only upon the falsehood and formality of polished life, but upon its tame virtues; yet envying, by fits, the selfish beings he despises, and melting into mere softness and compassion when the helplessness of childhood, or the frailty of woman, make an appeal to his generosity. Beings such as this are Childe Harold, and Lara, and Manfred, and almost every hero delineated by Byron, and such, unfortunately, was he himself. In those compositions where he attempts to describe, or give expression to any other kind of person, he comparatively fails; hence the dulness of his tragedies.

If Mr Wordsworth's theory be correct, that the poet ought to be a person who can intuitively conceive, and eloquently express, the thoughts and feelings of all orders of his fellow-creatures, the poetry of Byron, limited as it is to the description of one being, and that an unnatural, or at least an uncommon one, cannot be ranked among the highest. But such is the interest which his intense personal feeling has given to this character, that the attention of the public has been more forcibly arrested by it than by all the thoughts and feelings which other poets have breathed for the whole circle of their kind. It is to be observed, moreover, that if Byron be limited in character, he is not limited in any of the other elements of poetry. We find in him, according to the critic just quoted, a perpetual stream of quick-coming fancies-an eternal spring of fresh-blown images, which seem called into existence by the sudden flash of those glowing thoughts and overwhelming emotions, that struggle for expression through the whole flow of his poetry, and impart to a

diction that is often abrupt and irregular, a force and a charm which seem frequently to realize all that is said of inspiration.'

As a specimen of the gloomy, yet elevated melancholy of Byron, we may present his

APOSTROPHE TO THE OCEAN.

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 groan,
Without 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,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray,
And howling to his gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,

And dashest him again to earth :-there let him lay.
The armaments which thunder-strike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,

And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of Lord of thee, and arbiter of war;

These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.
Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee-
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since, their shores obey,-
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts :-not so thou,
Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play-
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow-
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

MOORE.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving;-boundless, endless, and sublime-
The image of Eternity-the throne

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Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone. THOMAS MOORE (1780–1852), a native of Ireland, and a member of the English bar, appeared as a poet before Lord Byron, but did not so soon fix the attention of the world. He published a translation of the Odes of Anacreon, with notes, in 1800, when only twenty years of age; and in the succeeding year, gave to the public a volume of original poetry, under the fictitious name of Little. This latter work, and a similar volume issued in 1806, were censured for the licentious character of great part of their contents; and it was not before 1813, when he commenced a series of songs for the melodies of his native country, that he merited and obtained true applause. The Irish Melodies, in which Mr Moore was the author of the new poetry, and Sir John Stevenson the harmonizer of the airs, has finally extended to ten numbers, and is one of the most admired and popular works of united music and verse which Britain has produced. The songs of Moore are characterised by a refined gaiety and a sparkling fancy, with little share of the profound passion and tenderness which Burns infused into the same class of compositions. His language is highly epigrammatic, and most dexterously adjusted to the movement of the air and the nature of the sentiment, but with the fault of too obvious an appearance of labour. In 1816, he contributed the poetry required in a musical publication entitled Sacred Songs, Duets, and Trios, and in the next year fixed his reputation as one of the first of modern poets, by publishing his Lalla Rookh. This is an Oriental tale, or rather a series of tales, conceived in the voluptuous spirit of Asiatic poetry, and replete with the richest Asiatic

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