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Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel
He nursed the pinion which impell'd the steel;
While the same plumage that had warm'd his nest
Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast. (1)

There be, who say, in these enlighten'd days,
That splendid lies are all the poet's praise;
That strain'd invention, ever on the wing,
Alone impels the modern bard to sing:
"Tis true, that all who rhyme-nay, all who write,
Shrink from that fatal word to genius-trite;
Yet Truth sometimes will lend her noblest fires,
And decorate the verse herself inspires:
This fact in Virtue's name let Crabbe (2) attest;
Though nature's sternest painter, yet the best.(3)

And here let Shee (4) and Genius find a place,
Whose pen and pencil yield an equal grace;
To guide whose hand the sister arts combine,
And trace the poet's or the painter's line;
Whose magic touch can bid the canvass glow,
Or pour the easy rhyme's harmonious flow;
While honours, doubly merited, attend
The poet's rival, but the painter's friend.

Blest is the man who dares approach the bower
Where dwelt the muses at their natal hour;
Whose steps have press'd, whose eye has mark'd afar,
The clime that nursed the sons of song and war,
The scenes which Glory still must hover o'er,
Her place of birth, her own Achaian shore.
But doubly blest is he whose heart expands
With hallow'd feelings for those classic lands;
Who rends the veil of ages long gone by,
And views their remnants with a poet's eye!
Wright! (5) 'twas thy happy lot at once to view
Those shores of glory, and to sing them too;
And sure no common muse inspired thy pen
To hail the land of gods and godlike men.

And you, associate bards! (6) who snatch'd to light Those gems too long withheld from modern sight; Whose mingling taste combined to cull the wreath Where Attic flowers Aonian odours breathe,

(1) Mr. Southey's delightful Life of Kirke White is in every one's hands.-L. E.

(2) "I consider Crabbe and Coleridge as the first of these times, in point of power and genius." B. 1816.-L. E.

(3) This eminent poet and excellent man died at his rectory of Trowbridge, in February, 1832, aged seventyeight. With the exception of the venerable Lord Stowell, he was the last surviving celebrated man mentioned by Boswell in connection with Johnson, who revised his poem of the Village. His other works are the Library, the Newspaper, the Borough, a collection of Poems, which Charles Fox read in manuscript on his death-bed; Tales, and, lastly, Tales of the Hall.-L. E.

(4) Mr. Shee, author of Rhymes on Art, and Elements of Art.-Now (1834) Sir Martin Archer Shee, and President of the Royal Academy.-L. E.]

(5) Walter Rodwell Wright, late consul-general for the Seven Islands, is author of a very beautiful poem, just published: it is entitled Hora Ionice, and is descriptive of the isles and the adjacent coast of Greece.-[To the third edition, which came out in 1816, was added an excellent translation of the Oreste of Alfieri. After his return to England, Mr. Wright was chosen Recorder of Bury St. Edmunds.-L. E.]

(6) The translators of the Anthology, Bland and Merivale, have since published separate poems, which evince genius that only requires opportunity to attain eminence.--[The

And all their renovated fragance flung,

To grace the beauties of your native tongue;
Now let those minds, that nobly could transfuse
The glorious spirit of the Grecian muse,
Though soft the echo, scorn a borrow'd tone: (7)
Resign Achaia's lyre, and strike your own.

Let these, or such as these, with just applause,
Restore the muse's violated laws;
But not in flimsy Darwin's pompous chime,
That mighty master of unmeaning rhyme,
Whose gilded cymbals, more adorn'd than clear,
The
eye delighted, but fatigued the ear;
In show the simple lyre could once surpass,
But now, worn down, appear in native brass;
While all his train of hovering sylphs around
Evaporate in similes and sound:

Him let them shun, with him let tinsel die:
False glare attracts, but more offends, the eye. (8)

Yet let them not to vulgar Wordsworth stoop, The meanest object of the lowly group, Whose verse, of all but childish prattle void, Seems blessed harmony to Lamb and Lloyd: (9) Let them but hold! my muse, nor dare to teach A strain far, far beyond thy humble reach: The native genius with their being given Will point the path, and peal their notes to heaven.

And thou, too, Scott! (10) resign to minstrels rude

The wilder slogan of a border feud:

Let others spin their meagre lines for hire;
Enough for genius if itself inspire!

Let Southey sing, although his teeming muse,
Prolific every spring, be too profuse;

Let simple Wordsworth (11) chime his childish verse,
And brother Coleridge lull the babe at nurse;
Let spectre-mongering Lewis aim, at most,
To rouse the galleries, or to raise a ghost;
Let Moor be lewd; let Strangford steal from Moore,
And swear that Camoëns sang such notes of yore;
Let Hayley hobble on, Montgomery rave,
And godly Grahame chant a stupid stave;

late Rev. Robert Bland published, in conjunction with Mr. Merivale, Collections from the Greek Anthology. He also wrote Edwy and Elgiva, the Four Slaves of Cythera, etc. In 1814, Mr. Merivale published Orlando in Roncevalles; and in the following year, An Ode on the Delivery of Europe. He is now one of the Commissioners of the new Bankruptcy Court.-L. E.]

(7) These lines originally ran thus:

"Translation's servile work at length disown,

And quit Achaia's muse to court your own."—P. E.

(8) The neglect of the Botanic Garden is some proof of returning taste. The scenery is its sole recommenda

tion.

(9) Messrs. Lamb and Lloyd, the most ignoble followers of Sonthey and Co.-[In 1798, Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd published in conjunction a volume, entitled, Poems in Blank Verse. Mr. Lamb is also the author of John Woodville, Tales from Shakspeare, the Essays of Elia, etc.; and Mr. Lloyd has since published Edward Oliver, a novel, Nuge Canore, and a translation of Alfieri's Tragedies.L. E.]

(10) By the bye, I hope that in Mr. Scott's next poem, his hero or heroine will be less addicted to "Gramarye," and more to Grammar, than the Lady of the Lay and her bravo, William of Deloraine.

(11) "Unjust." B. 1810.-L. E.

Let sonneteering Bowles his strains refine,
And whine and whimper to the fourteenth line;
Let Stott, Carlisle, (1) Matilda, and the rest
Of Grub-street, and of Grosvenor-place the best,
Scrawl on, till death release us from the strain,
Or Common Sense assert her rights again.
But thou, with powers that mock the aid of praise,
Shouldst leave to humbler bards ignoble lays:
Thy country's voice, the voice of all the nine,
Demand a hallow'd harp-that harp is thine.
Say! will not Caledonia's annals yield
The glorious record of some nobler field
Than the vile foray of a plundering clan,
Whose proudest deeds disgrace the name of man?
Or Marmion's acts of darkness, fitter food
For Sherwood's outlaw tales of Robin Hood?
Scotland! still proudly claim thy native bard,
And be thy praise his first, his best reward!
Yet not with thee alone his name should live,
But own the vast renown a world can give;
Be known, perchance, when Albion is no more,
And tell the tale of what she was before;
To future times her faded fame recall,
And save her glory, though his country fall.

Yet what avails the sanguine poet's hope,
To conquer ages, and with time to cope?
New eras spread their wings, new nations rise,
And other victors fill the applauding skies;
A few brief generations fleet along,
Whose sons forget the poet and his song:

(1) It may be asked, why I have censured the Earl of Carlisle, my guardian and relative, to whom I dedicated a volume of puerile poems a few years ago?-The guardianship was nominal, at least as far as I have been able to discover; the relationship I cannot help, and am very sorry for it; but as his lordship seemed to forget it on a very essential occasion to me, I shall not burthen my memory with the recollection. I do not think that personal differences sanction the unjust condemnation of a brother scribbler; but I see no reason why they should act as a preventive, when the author, noble or ignoble, has, for a series of years, beguiled a "discerning public" (as the advertisements have it) with divers reams of most orthodox imperial nonsense. Besides, I do not step aside to vituperate the earl: no-his works come fairly in review with those of other patrician literati. If, before I escaped from my teens, I said any thing in favour of his lordship's paper books, it was in the way of dutiful dedication, and more from the advice of others than my own judgment, and I seize the first oppor tunity of pronouncing my sincere recantation. I have heard that some persons conceive me to be under obligations to Lord Carlisle: if so, I shall be most particularly happy to learn what they are, and when conferred, that they may be duly appreciated and publicly acknowledged. What I have humbly advanced as an opinion on his printed things, I am prepared to support, if necessary, by quotations from ele. gies, eulogies, odes, episodes, and certain facetious and dainty tragedies bearing his name and mark:

"What can ennoble knaves, or fouls, or cowards?
Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards."

So says Pope. Amen.-["Much too savage, whatever the foundation might be." B. 1816.-L. E.]

(2) "The devil take that phoenix! How came it there?" B. 1816.-L. E.

(3) This line was originally,

With odes by Smith and epic songs by Hoyle." Of the injustice of this attack, the poet, on the brink of publication, repented, at least as far as regarded one of the intended victims. Moore.-P. E.

(4) The Rev. Charles James Hoare published, in 1808, the Shipwreck of St. Paul, a Seatonian prize poem.-L. E.

(5) The Rev. Charles Hoyle, author of Exodus, an epic in thirteen books, and several other Seatonian prize poems.-L.E. (6) The Games of Hoyle, well known to the votaries of

E'en now, what once-loved minstrels scarce may claim
The transient mention of a dubious name!
When fame's loud trump hath blown its noblest blast,
Though long the sound, the echo sleeps at last;
And glory, like the phoenix (2) 'midst her fires,
Exhales her odours, blazes, and expires.

Shall hoary Granta call her sable sons,
Expert in science, more expert at puns?
Shall these approach the muse? ah, no! she flies,
Even from the tempting ore of Seaton's prize;
Though printers condescend the press to soil
With rhyme(3)by Hoare,(4)and epic blank by Hoyle:(5)
Not him whose page, if still upheld by whist,
Requires no sacred theme to bid us list. (6)
Ye! who in Granta's honours would surpass,
Must mount her Pegasus, a full-grown ass;
A foal well worthy of her ancient dam,
Whose Helicon is duller than her Cam. (7)

There Clarke, still striving piteously "to please," Forgetting doggrel leads not to degrees,

A would-be satirist, a hired buffoon,

A monthly scribbler of some low lampoon, (8)
Condemn'd to drudge, the meanest of the mean,
And furbish falsehoods for a magazine,
Devotes to scandal his congenial mind,
Himself a living libel on mankind. (9)
Oh! dark asylum of a Vandal race! (10)
At once the boast of learning, and disgrace!
So lost to Phoebus, that nor Hodgson's (11) verse (12)
Can make thee better, nor poor Hewson's (13) worse.

whist, chess, etc., are not to be superseded by the vagaries of his poetical namesake, whose poem comprised, as expressly stated in the advertisement, all the plagues of Egypt."

(7) This line is a versification of a thought of Byron's, expressed in a letter to Mr. Dallas, in which, speaking of the University of Cambridge, he says:-"The intellects of her children are as stagnant as her Cam.” It was no doubt, as Moore observes, under the influence of a similar feeling that Milton gave vent to the exclamation, that Cam bridge was "a place quite incompatible with the votaries of Phoebus." The poet Dryden too, who, like Milton, had incurred some mark of disgrace at Cambridge, seems to have entertained but little more veneration for his Alma Mater.-P. E.

(8) "Right enough: this was well deserved, and well laid B. 1816.-L. E.

on."

(9) This person, who has lately betrayed the most rabid symptoms of confirmed authorship, is writer of a poem denominated the Art of Pleasing, as "lucus a non lucendo," containing little pleasantry and less poetry. He also acts as monthly stipendiary and collector of calumnies for the Satirist. If this unfortunate young man would exchange the magazines for the mathematics, and endeavour to take a decent degree in his university, it might eventually prove more serviceable than his present salary.-[Mr. Hewson Clarke was also the author of The Saunterer, and a History of the Campaign in Russia.-L. E.]

(10) "Into Cambridgeshire the Emperor Probus transported a considerable body of Vandals."-Gibbon's Decline and Fall, vol. li. p. 83. There is no reason to doubt the truth of this assertion; the breed is still in high perfection.

(1) This gentleman's name requires no praise: the man who in translation displays unquestionable genins may be well expected to excel in original composition, of which it is to be hoped we shall soon see a splendid specimen.-[Besides a translation of Juvenal, Mr. Hodgson has published Lady Jane Grey, Sir Edjar, and The Friends, a poem in four books. He also translated, in conjunction with Dr. Butler, Lucien Bonaparte's unreadable epic of Charlemagne.—L. E.] (12) In the original manuscript we read:"So sunk in dullness, and so lost in shame, That Smythe and Hodgson scarce redeem thy fame." Moore.-P. E.

(13) Hewson Clarke, esq. as it is written.

But wher fair Isis rolls her purer wave,
The partial muse delighted loves to lave;
On her green banks a greener wreath she wove,
To crown the bards that haunt her classic grove
Where Richards wakes a genuine poet's fires,
And modern Britons glory in their sires. (1)

For me, who, thus unask'd, have dared to tell
My country what her sons should know too well,
Zeal for her honour bade me here engage
The host of idiots that infest her age;
No just applause her honour'd name shall lose,
As first in freedom, dearest to the muse.
Oh! would thy bards but emulate thy fame,
And rise more worthy, Albion, of thy name!
What Athens was in science, Rome in power,
What Tyre appear'd in her meridian hour,
Tis thine at once, fair Albion! to have been-
Earth's chief dictatress, ocean's lovely queen: (2)
But Rome decay'd, and Athens strew'd the plain,
And Tyre's proud piers lie shatter'd in the main;
Like these, thy strength may sink, in ruin hurl'd,
And Britain fall, the bulwark of the world.
But let me cease, and dread Cassandra's fate,
With warning ever scoff'd at, till too late;
To themes less lofty still my lay confine,
And urge thy bards to gain a name like thine. (3)

Then, hapless Britain! be thy rulers blest,
The senate's oracles, the people's jest!
Still hear thy motley orators dispense
The flowers of rhetoric, though not of sense,

(1) The boriginal Britons, an excellent poem, by Richards. [The Rev. George Richards, D.D. has also sent from the press Songs of the Aboriginal Bards of Britain, Modern France, two volumes of Miscellaneous Poems, and Bampton Lectures "On the divine Origin of Prophecy." This gentleman is now Rector of St. Martin's in the Fields.-L. E.) (2) "Lovely queen." The epithet was altered from lonely. Dallas.-P. E.

(3) With this verse the satire originally ended.-L. E. (4) A friend of mine being asked, why his Grace of Portland was likened to an old woman? replied, "he supposed it was because he was past bearing."-His Grace is now gathered to his grandmothers, where he sleeps as sound as ever; but even his sleep was better than his colleagues' waking. 1811.

(5) Georgia.

(6) Mount Caucasus.

(7) These four lines originally stood:

"But should I back return, no letter'd sage

Shall drag my common-place book on the stage.

Let vain Valentia* rival luckless Carr,

And equal him whose work he sought to mar."-L. E. (8) In a letter, written from Gibraltar to his friend Hodgson, Lord Byron says,-"I have seen Sir John Carr at Seville and Cadiz, and, like Swift's barber, have been down on my knees to beg he would not put me into black and white."

LE.

(9) Lord Elgin would fain persuade us that all the figures, with and without noses, in his stone-shop, are the work of Phidias! "Credat Judæus!"

• Lord Valentia (whose tremendous travels are forthcoming, with due decorations, graphical, topographical, and typographical) deposed, on Sir John Carr's unlucky suit, that Mr. Dubois' satire prevented his purchase of the Stranger in Ireland.-Oh, fie, my lord! has your lordship no more feeling for a fellow-tourist ?-but" two of a trade," they say, etc.

From the many tours he made, Sir John was called "The Jaunting Carr." A wicked wit having severely lashed him in a publication called My Pocket Book; or Hints for a Ryght Merrie and Conceited Tour, be brought an action of damages against the publisher; but as the work contained only what the court deemed legitimate criticism, the knight was nonsuited.-Edward Dubois, Esq., the author of this pleasant satire, has also published The Wreath, consisting of translations from Sappho, Bion and Moschus, Old Nick, a satirical story, and an edition of the Decameron of Boccaccio.-L. E.]

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snows sublime.

But should I back return, no tempting press (7)
Shall drag my journal from the desk's recess :
Let coxcombs, printing as they come from far,
Snatch his own wreath of ridicule from Carr; (8)
Let Aberdeen and Elgin (9) still pursue
The shade of fame through regions of virtù;
Waste useless thousands on their Phidian freaks,
Misshapen monuments and maim'd antiques;
And make their grand saloons a general mart
For all the mutilated blocks of art:
Of Dardan tours let dilettanti tell,

I leave topography to rapid (10) Gell; (11)
And, quite content, no more shall interpose
To stun the public ear-at least with prose. (12)

Thus far I've held my undisturb'd career, Prepared for rancour, steel'd 'gainst selfish fear: This thing of rhyme I ne'er disdain'd to ownThough not obtrusive, yet not quite unknown: My voice was heard again, though not so loud, My page, though nameless, never disavow'd;

(10) The original epithet was "classic." Lord Byron altered it in the fifth edition, and added this note-"Rapid, indeed! He topographised ad typographized King Priam's dominions in three days! I called him 'classic' before I saw the Troad, but since have learned better than to tack to his name what don't belong to it."-L. E.

(II) Mr. Gell's Topography of Troy and Ithaca cannot fail to ensure the approbation of every man possessed of classical taste, as well for the information Mr. Gell conveys to the mind of the reader, as for the ability and research the respective works display.-["Since seeing the plain of Troy, my opinions are somewhat changed as to the above note.. Gell's survey was hasty and superficial." B. 1816.-L. E.]

Shortly after his return from Greece, in 181, Lord Byron wrote a review of Mr. (now Sir William) Gell's works for the Monthly Review. In his Diary of 1821 there is this passage:-"In reading, I have just chanced upon an expression of Tom Campbell's: -speaking of Collins, he says that no reader cares any more about the characteristic manners of his eclogues than about the authenticity of the tale of Troy.' 'Tis false-we do care about the authenticity of the tale of Troy.' I have stood upon that plain, daily for more than a month, in 1810; and if any thing diminished my pleasure, it was that the blackguard Bryant had impugned its veracity. It is true, I read Homer Travestied, because Hobhouse and others bored me with their learned localities, and I love quizzing. But I still venerated the grand original as the truth of history (in the material facts) and of place. Otherwise it would have given me no delight. Who will persuade me, when I reclined upon a mighty tomb, that it did not contain a hero?-its very magnitude proved this. Men do not labour over the ignoble and petty dead:-and why should not the dead be Homer's dead?"-L. E.

(12) Lord Byron set out on his travels with the determination to keep no journal. In a letter to his friend Henry Drury, when on the point of sailing, he pleasantly says,"Hobhouse has made woundy preparations for a book on his return-one hundred pens, two gallons of japan ink, and several volumes of best blank, is no bad provision for a discerning public. I have laid down my pen, but have promised to contribute a chapter on the state of morals, etc. etc."-L. E.

And now at once I tear the veil away:--
Cheer on the pack! the quarry stands at bay,
Unscared by all the din of Melbourne-house, (1)
By Lambe's resentment, or by Holland's spouse,
By Jeffrey's harmless pistol, Hallam's rage,
Edina's brawny sons and brimstone page.
Our men in buckram shall have blows enough,
And feel they too are "penetrable stuff:"
And though I hope not hence unscathed to go,
Who conquers me shall find a stubborn foe.
The time hath been, when no harsh sound would fall
From lips that now may seem imbued with gall; (2)
Nor fools nor follies tempt me to despise

The meanest thing that crawl'd beneath my eyes:
But now, so callous grown, so changed since youth,
I've learn'd to think, and sternly speak the truth;
Learn'd to deride the critic's starch decree,
And break him on the wheel he meant for me;
To spurn the rod a scribbler bids me kiss,
Nor care if courts and crowds applaud or hiss:
Nay, more, though all my rival rhymesters frown,
I too can hunt a poetaster down;

And, arm'd in proof, the gauntlet cast at once
To Scotch marauder, and to southern dunce.
Thus much I've dared; if my incondite lay
Hath wrong'd these righteous times, let others say:
This, let the world, which knows not how to spare,
Yet rarely blames unjustly, now declare. (3)

POSTSCRIPT

TO THE SECOND EDITION.

I HAVE been informed, since the present edition went to the press, that my trusty and well-beloved cousins, the Edinburgh Reviewers, are preparing a most vehement critique on my poor, gentle, unresisting, Muse, whom they have already so be-deviled with their ungodly ribaldry:

"Tantæne animis cœlestibus iræ!"

I suppose I must say of Jeffrey as Sir Andrew Aguecheek saith, "an I had known he was so cunning of fence, I had seen him damned ere I had fought him." What a pity it is that I shall be beyond the Bosphorus before the next number has passed the Tweed! But I yet hope to light my pipe with it in Persia.

My northern friends have accused me, with justice, of personality towards their great literary anthropo

(1) "Singular enough, and din enough, God knows." B. 1816.-L. E.

(2) In this passage, hastily thrown off as it is, "we find," says Moore, "the strongest trace of that wounded feeling, which bleeds, as it were, through all his subsequent writings."--L. E.

phagus, Jeffrey; but what else was to be done with him and his dirty pack, who feed by "lying and slandering," and slake their thirst by "evil speaking?" I have adduced facts already well known, and of Jeffrey's mind I have stated my free opinion, nor has he thence sustained any injury;-what scavenger was ever soiled by being pelted with mud? It may be said, that I quit England because I have censured there" "persons of honour and wit about town;" but I am coming back again, and their vengeance will keep hot till my return. Those who know me can testify that my motives for leaving England are very different from fears, literary or personal: those who do not may one day be convinced. Since the publication of this thing, my name has not been concealed; I have been mostly in London, ready to answer for my transgressions, and in daily expectation of sundry cartels; but, alas! "the age of chivalry is over," or, in the vulgar tongue, there is no spirit now-a-days.

There is a youth ycleped Hewson Clarke (subaudi esquire), a sizer of Emanuel College, and, I believe, a denizen of Berwick-upon-Tweed, whom I have introduced in these pages to much better company than he has been accustomed to meet; he is, notwithstanding, a very sad dog, and for no reason that I can discover, except a personal quarrel with a bear, kept by me at Cambridge to sit for a fellowship, and whom the jealousy of his Trinity contemporaries prevented from success, has been abusing me, and, what is worse, the defenceless innocent above mentioned, in The Satirist, for one year and some months. I am utterly unconscious of having given him any provocation; indeed, I am guiltless of having heard his name till coupled with The Satirist. He has therefore no reason to complain, and I dare say that, like Sir Fretful Plagiary, he is rather pleased than otherwise. I have now mentioned all who have done me the honour to notice me and mine, that is, my bear and my book, except the editor of The Satirist, who, it seems, is a gentleman -God wot! I wish he could impart a little of his gentility to his subordinate scribblers. I hear that Mr. Jerningham is about to take up the cudgels for his Mæcenas, Lord Carlisle. I hope not: he was one of the few who, in the very short intercourse I had with him, treated me with kindness when a boy; and whatever he may say or do, "pour on, I will endure." I have nothing further to add, save a general note of thanksgiving to readers, purchasers, and publishers, and, in the words of Scott, I wish

"To all and each a fair good night,

And rosy dreams and slumbers light."

(3) "The greater part of this satire I most sincerely wish had never been written-not only on account of the injustice of much of the critical, and some of the personal part of it but the tone and temper are such as I cannot approve. -Braon. July 14, 1816. Diodati, Geneva.”—L. E.

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage;

A ROMAUNT. (1)

L'univers est une espèce de livre, dont on n'a la que la première page quand on n'a vu que son pays. J'en ai feuilleté un assez grand nombre, que j'ai trouvées également mauvaises. Cet examen ne m'a point été infructueux. Je haissais ma patrie. Toutes les impertinences des peuples divers, parmi lesquels j'ai vécu, m'ont reconcilié avec elle. Quand je n'aurais tiré d'autre bénéfice de mes voyages que celui-là, je n'en regretterais ni les frais ni les fatigues.-Le Cosmopolite. (2)

PREFACE

TO THE FIRST AND SECOND CANTOS.

The following poem was written, for the most part, amidst the scenes which it attempts to describe. It was begun in Albania; and the parts relative to

(1) This noble composition was begun in 1809, and ended in 1818. Commenced perhaps before the Author's powers had reached their utmost development, the work was always, at whatever intervals,-some of them considerable,-taken up by him as one which he desired and designed to render complete in itself; the realization of a plan and conception entirely novel and peculiar,-that of presenting, in a continuous stream of verse, the essence of the thoughts and feelings elicited from his individual mind, during a succession of years, and at different stages, consequently, of his intellectual and moral being, by the contemplation of those chosen scenes of external nature,-whether in themselves extraordinarily beautiful or sublime, or raised to immortal interest by the transactions which they had witnessed, and the personages with whose names they had come to be inextricably interwoven,-which it had been his own fortune to traverse in the course of his earthly pilgrimage. Taken as a whole, this Poem is, undoubtedly, the most original and felicitous of all Lord Byron's serious efforts. It opens the first specimen of an absolutely new species of composition ;-perhaps the only such specimen that European literature had received during a period of two centuries-in other words, since Shakspeare founded the Romantic Drama, and Cervantes the Romantic Novel of modern Europe.

The first Canto was commenced, as Lord Byron's diaries inform us, at Joannina in Albania, on the 31st of October, 1809; and the second was finished on the 28th of March, in the succeeding year, at Smyrna.* These two Cantos, after having received numberless corrections and additions in their progress through the press, were first published in London in March, 1812, and immediately placed their au thor on a level with the very highest names of his age. The impression they created was more uniform, decisive, and triumphant, than any that had been witnessed in this country for at least two generations. "I awoke one morning," he says, "and found myself famous." In truth, he had fixed himself, at a single bound, on a summit, such as no English poet had ever before attained, but after a long succession of painful and comparatively neglected efforts.

Those who wish to analyse, with critical accuracy, the progress of Lord Byron in his art, must, of course, interpose their study of various minor pieces, between their perusal of the first and second Cantos of Childe Harold, and that of the third; which was finished at Diodati, near Geneva, in July. 1816, and records the author's mental experiences during his perambulations of the Netherlands, the Rhine country, and Switzerland, in that and the two preceding months the poetical autobiography of, perhaps, the most melancholy period of his not less melancholy than glorious life,that in which the wounds of domestic misery, that

• The poem was completed during Lord Byron's residence at the house of the Consul General, where he remained till the 11th April, with the exception of two or three days employed in visiting the ruins of Ephesus. The following memorandum was prefixed to his original manuscript :

"Byron, Joannina in Albania. Begun October 31, 1809, concluded Canto 2, Smyrna, March 28th, 1810. Byron."-P. E.

Spain and Portugal were composed from the author's observations in those countries. Thus much it may be necessary to state for the correctness of the descriptions. The scenes attempted to be sketched are in Spain, Portugal, Epirus, Acarnania, and Greece. There, for the present, the poem stops: its reception will determine whether the author may venture to

had driven him from his native land, were yet green, and bleeding at the touch. This Canto was published by itself, in August, 1816; and, notwithstanding at once the proverbial hazard of continuations, and the obloquy which envious exaggeration had at the time attached to Lord Byron's name, was all but universally admitted to have more than sustained the elevation of the original flight of Childe Harold. A just and generous article, by Sir Walter Scott, in the Quarterly Review, not only silenced the few cavillers who had ventured to challenge the inspiration of this magnifi. cent Canto, but had a more powerful influence than Lord Byron, gratefully as he acknowledged it, seems to have been aware of, in rebuking the harsh prejudices which had unfortunately gathered about some essential points of his personal character.

The fourth and by far the longest Canto, in itself no doubt the grandest exertion of Lord Byron's genins, appears to have occupied the nearly undivided labour of half a year. It was begun at Venice, in June, 1817, and finished in the same city, in January, 1818; and, being shortly af terwards published in London, carried the Author's fame to the utmost height it ever reached. It is at once the most flowing, the most energetic, and the most solemn of all his pieces; and would of itself sufficiently justify the taste of the surviving affection that dictated for the sole inscription of Pilgrimage." his tombstone,-"Here lies the Author of Childe Harold's

The original MS. has furnished many variæ lectiones, which may probably be interesting to an extensive class of the Poet's readers. One, and the most important, in order to avoid repetitions on the margin, we mention once for all here: in the first draught of the opening Cantos, the hero is uniformly "Childe Burun."†

Some splendid fragments, which the author never worked into the texture of his piece, will also be found in the notes to this edition; nor, after the lapse of twenty years, will any one, it is presumed, complain that we have printed in like manner certain complete stanzas, which Lord Byron was induced to withhold from the public, only by tenderness for the feelings of individuals now beyond the reach of satire. -L.E.

The reader will probably be amused with the following passage, extracted from one of Lord Byron's letters to Mr. Dallas, on the subject of a new and rather Cockney reading of this title:-"Instruct Mr. Murray not to allow his shopman to call the work Child of Harrow's Pilgrim age!!! as he has done to some of my astonished friends, who wrote to inquire after my sanity on the occasion, as well they might."-P. E.

(2) In a letter to Mr. Dallas, his Lordship thus notices this work:-"The passage is from a little French volume, pub. lished in 1798, a great favourite with me, which I picked

"If there could be any doubt as to his intention of delineating himself in his hero, this adoption of the old Norman name of his family, which he seems to have at first contemplated, would be sufficient to remove it." Moore.-P. E.

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