learned what was in contemplation she had excited the enemy on the on either side; that those who se- night of the 20th of August to atcretly consulted her respecting tack the picket of our regiment. their future fortunes had confided From the conversation she had had many secrets to her, and that she with our officers, she learned that was under some obligation to two were to precede me: she had chance. As to what concerned me sold to the one adulterated wine, particularly, she had selected me which made bim sick; as to the to make a striking example, for the other, at the very moment he was purpose of establishing her repu- about to set out, she approached as tation as a fortune-teller, by pre. if to sell him something, and had dicting so long beforehand the term contrived to introduce a bit of burnof my life. ing sponge into one of the nostrils

A

At the approach of this period of his horse.

DESULTORY ESSAYS CONNECTED WITH LITERATURE.

From the Edinburgh Magazine, for March, 1818. :

telligent readers to mention, that the following is the

rational way of spending the evenfirst of a series of prose essays from the elegant pen ing." Our immortal Burns, too, if

which has formerly enriched our poetical department with the verses entitled, "The Mossy Seat," "Melancholy," "Disappointment," "Ode to the spirit of Kosciusko," and other pieces of a similar description; a continued series of which, also, we have no common pleasure in being now enabled to promise.-[Edit.

No. I.

She did not suggest, at least concurred in, the remark, that there could be no surer way of rendering one of our species miserable, than by endowing him with extraordinary sensibility, with appetencies of mind, which it

ON THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF would be difficult to supply, and with

700 10 VICHILDE HAROLD.

"Oh! what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!" Hamlet.

passions and powers beyond the run of common mortality. The opinion is not merely hazarded; it is one that is confirmed by melancholy experience, and attested by examples in every age, and by the misfortunes

I IT is an undeniable fact, that there is no situation, among the varied gradations of civilized society, that is not productive of some peculiar plea- and unhappiness so frequently atsures and disadvantages to its posses- tendant on the possession of genius. sor, something, indeed, that favours We need scarcely substantiate our the moral axiom, that Nature is no statement by adverting to the latter stepdame, but equally kind and bene- days of Swift, and Collins, and Beatficent toall her children. For, really, tie, to the gentle Otway, the melanwhen we often see, what we have al- choly Gray, or the unfortunate Chatways been accustomed to esteem the terton; for, except in the almost best gifts which heaven bequeaths to supernatural instance of Rousseau, man, productive of a restlessness and it never was exhibited in such strong dissatisfaction of spirit allied to we- and vivid lines, as in the illustrious lancholy itself, and beholding all the author of the work now before us. contingencies of life in their worst There seem to be melancholy ideas lights, we are forcibly reminded of for ever floating on his mind, and the comparative happiness of unam- overshadowing, with a sad and sombitious mediocrity, and turn with de- bre twilight, all his prospects, and light to the innocent and artless days, breathing, like the simoom, " the so faithfully delineated by Goldsmith, most lone wind of the desert," .deswhen we "thought cross purposes the truction over all his happiness, and highest stretch of human wit, and desolation over all his hopes, and questions and commands the most which have often driven him from

the settled society of his fellow men, forward to explain its wonders, there "to breath the difficult air of the are some phenomena which have iced mountain top," to hold converse hitherto appeared incongruous and with the fountains and with the fo- inexplicable; and, as an example, rests, and keep up a proud commu- we may cite the uncontroverted, nion with the mysteries and the ma- yet apparently paradoxical, axiom jesty of nature. of Rouchefoucault, that " there is al

To our more unimaginative rea- ways something in the misfortunes ders, we are conscious that these re- of our dearest friends not displeasflections will appear to savour of en- ing to us." It is not a barbarous thusiasm, and be reckoned as des- triumph over their unhappiness; and criptive not of the poet, but of his it does not arise from a want of syınideal personage; not of Lord Byron, pathy for their sufferings; it is a far but of Childe Harold. It may be more noble and generous emotion; so; for we confess that we were it is allied to what Ossian has happinever able to discover the line of ly denominated "the joy of grief." distinction between them. The in- We are confident, that if Childe cidents by which the Childe is first Harold had been represented to us introduced to us, and the causes of in his feelings, and d reflections, and the morbid melancholy of his heart, conduct, as a gay, an innocent, and may be different. We trust, at least, a happy being, "more sinned athat the causes are so; but, whatever gainst than sinning;" pleased with the excitements may have been, the all he beheld and with all he heard; state of mind induced is unquestion- at peace with himself and every thing ably the same in both. Lord Byron around him, that neither his gaiety, has too much respect for himself, to innocence, nor happiness, could have yield to an overweening inclination, made such an impression on the mind. if its seductions led him to be suspect- It is remarkable, also, that the ed of egotism; and he has therefore Childe Harold, of the first and second adopted the most delicate mode of cantos, is not the Childe Harold of communicating to the world his own the third. In the space that elapses feelings, and reflections, and sor- between his pilgrimage through rows; and of displaying and awaken- Greece, and his reappearance on the ing into exertion the powers and plains of Waterloo, his moral conpassions of a mind, so richly endow- stitution seems to have undergone a ed, and so proudly elevated, as to remarkable change. It is true, that have little sympathy for the pursuits his curses on the despot are as long and objects that agitate the minds and loud, and his disdain of the and occupy the attention of his less slave as deep and rooted, and his gifted brethern of mankind. admiration of patriotism as warm

We do not agree with his Lord- and fervent on the field of Morat, as ship, that Childe Harold is a repul- on the plains of Marathon;-that sive personage; we think him wholly his tenderness for female beauty, and the reverse, though we cannot well female fidelity, is equally great;define the nameless something that and that his affection for the innoinduces us to sympathize in all the cence of childhood remains unabatloathings, and sicknesses, and melan- ed. In these feelings there is no choly of his heart, and seduces us to change; but it is not to these that we admire the daring pride, and the allude. The Childe is introduced to dangerous precepts of his cheerless us as one who is satiated with the luxand gloomy philosophy. Notwith- uries of life, and disgusted with the standing all our researches in the selfishness of the world ;-one, who labyrinth of mind, and all the inge- considers all his kind as faithless nious theories that have been brought and unfeeling beings, divested of gratitude for good offices, and sym-ed with the mystical philosophy of pathy for affliction; and he forsakes Wordsworth, and feels himself to exhis native land

Pained, and pining in the dearth,
And darkness of his spirits view-

"Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends;

where roll'd the ocean, thereon was his home;
Where a blue sky, and glowing clime, extends,
The desert, forest cavern, breaker's foam,
Were unto him companionship; they spake
A mutual language, clearer than the tome
of his land's tongue which he would oft forsake

He had the passion and the power to ream;

ist less as an individual of a particular species, than as a portion of an eternal spirit, that animates and pervades every thing within the doto traverse the ocean waves, and minions of Nature. make the wide world his country. It is not to form new friendships, for he abjures his kind, and despises their companionship; - he is aware that human life consists of agitation, and feels that the mind must be employed;-yet he has no object to place on the pedestal of the image he has torn from its niche;-though the world presents him with nothing capable of arresting his attachment, like the St. Leon of Godwin, or the La- Whether these emotions have spondurlad of Southey, he feels endowed taneously arisen within him, and the with a supernatural portion of vital beautiful and variegated banks of the energy; and though surrounded by Rhine, and the shores of Lake Lehuman beings, he is conscious that man, and the sublime and lonely his curse is solitude. regions of the Alps, were esteemed

For Nature's pages glass'd by sunbeams on the lake."

It is natural for the mourner to the most fit places for their developeshut his ears to the shouts of mirth, ment and indulgence; or whether it yet to turn his heart to the retrospec- was the scenery itself that kindled tive contemplation of hapiness, and these emotions, we do not know, take delight only in what coincides though we rather imagine that the and associates with his own feelings. latter is the case. At all events, it is The Childe, as it were instictively, evident, that his Lordship had been looks towards Greece, where he be- studying Wordsworth; that he was holds the reflected image of himself; captivated with the delirating tone -the smiles of happiness turned into that pervades his coinpositions; and, mourning, and the garden of existence that he was himself smitten with an into a desolate wilderness. It is with enthusiastick admiration of all natuthese feelings of loathing, loneliness, ral objects; and with the desire of and disgust, that he traverses the defining aspirations to others, which lovely but degraded regions of the are, in fact, mysterious, and inexpliMorea, contrasts its present abject cable to himself. Notwithstanding state with its former dignity, gran- this great and inherent deformity, deur, and elevation; wandering a- there is a majesty and commanding mong the ivied colunins" which force, a dignity of thought, and a Time and Turk have spared," and depth of pathos, in the delineation, heaving many a sigh, as he perceives and in the dissection of these feel

ings, which we have never seen equalled elsewhere; and which, we have little doubt, will place the third canto of Childe Harold in the eyes of posterity, among the most noble and successful efforts of this sombre, but truly sublime genius.

M

[28

POETRY.

BEPPO-a Venetian Story.

BY LORD BYRON.

Rosalind. Farewell, Monsieur Traveller: Look, you lisp, and wear strange suits, disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with your Nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are; or I will scarce think that you have swam in a Gondola. As You Like it. Act IV. Sc. 1.

Annotation of the Commentators.

That is, been at Venice, which was much visited by the young English gentlemen of those times, and was then what Paris is now the seat of all dissoluterness.

r.

S. A..

'TIS known, at least it should be, that throughout,
All countries of the Catholic persuasion,

Some weeks before Shrove Tuesday comes about,
The people take their fill of recreation,
And buy repentance, ere they grow devout,

However high their rank, or low their station,
With fiddling, feasting, dancing, drinking, masquing,
And other things which may be had for asking.

II.

The moment night with dusky mantle covers

The skies (and the more duskily the better,) The time less liked by husbands than by lovers, Begins, and prudery flings aside her fetter;

And gayety on restless tiptoe hovers,

Giggling with all the gallants who beset her;
And there are songs and quavers, roaring, humming,
Guitars, and every other sort of strumming.

ΙΙΙ.

And there are dresses splendid, but fantastical,

Masks of all times and nations, Turks and Jews,

Whose tints are truth and beauty at their best;
And when you to Manfrini's palace go,
That picture (howsoever fine the rest)
Is lovliest to my mind of all the show;
It may perhaps be also to your zest,
And that's the cause I rhyme upon it so.
life!

And harlequins and clowns, whith feats gymnastical, Tis but a portrait of his son and wife,

Greeks, Romans, Yankee-doodles, and

All kinds of dress, except the ecclesiastical,

All people, as their fancies hit, may choose,
But no one in these parts may quiz the clergy,
Therefore take heed, ye Freethinkers! I charge ye.

IV.

You'd better walk about begirt with briars

Instead of coat and smallclothes, than put on
A single stitch reflecting upon friars,
Although you swore it only was in fun;
They'd haul you o'er the coals, and stir the fires
Of Phlegethon with every mother's son,
Nor say one mass to cool the cauldron's bubble
That boild your bones, unless you paid them double.

V.

And self; but such a woman! love in
XIII.

Love in full life and length, not love ideal,
No, nor ideal beauty, that fine name,
But something better still, so very real,

That the sweet model must have been the same;
A thing that you would purchase, beg, or steal,
Wer't not impossible, besides a shame:
The face recals some face, as 'twere with pain,
You once have seen, but ne'er will see again;

XIV.

But worthier of these much more jolly fellows, 10) She deemed the window-frames and shutters brittle,

[For most men (till by losing rendered sager)
Will back their own opinions by a wager.