in rich and vivid colours the interesting scenes of Turkish Greece, with those mixed, sentiments of admiration and regret, which the awful traces of pristine splendour in the bosom of that fair region were calculated to produce. Through these magnificent scenes the poem has dragged along a refining, repining, blasphemous sensualist, sulky at any turn that brought new beauties to his eye, and in the midst of external glory and grandeur, fretting about himself and his disappointments, and haunted by the ghosts of his departed plea sures. But although we were sorry that lord Byron had picked up this fellow, to set him in the heart of ancient Greece, instead of leaving him to do his duty on the Thames; yet, as he bore so unmeaning a part in the scene, we cannot say that he prevented us from enjoying the brilliant stanzas with which the poem of Childe Harold is interspersed; but when we find him, strutting in his cap and feather, the hero of every subsequent poem from the same hand, we must confess that we totally lose our temper, and feel the most pleasing part of the performance to be that in which the grim-featured sentimentalist surrenders his existence to one of those guns or blunderbusses which lord Byron enumerates in the very wellchosen motto of his present poem, as the instruments which he has always at hand to bring about his bloody catastrophes. As the Childe possessed nothing of the poet's melancholy, nothing of that musing sadness which sometimes belongs to a rich imagination combined with a soft and tender disposition, so neither has the Giaour, or the Corsair, or Selim, or Alp, any of those properties which entitle them to the true and natural sympathies of the reader; none of those delights which, "dolphin-like, showed their backs above the element they lived in." They are a very narrow-minded gentry, without any sentiments that carry them out of the selfish circle of animal pleasure, but covering all their brutal habits with the expiatory quality of desperate devotion to some pretty woman. We cannot, however, say so much for Alp, the hero of the poem now in our hands, who having suffered some outrageous indignity or some state persecution at Venice, his native city, enters a renegado into the service of the Moslems, and undertakes the siege of Corinth, of which he anticipates the total destruction, and where he knows the object of his love, together with her aged father, must necessarily be liable to perish in the general carnage, in order to be revenged upon his own country. And even when, on the night before the siege, the ghost of the gentle lady visited her lover in his sad vigil under the walls of the city, and threatened him with the loss of hea ven and herself, he remained true to his turban and his Turkish creed, thus giving an oblique preference to the paradise of Mahomet and the celestial houris. It must be owned, however, in behalf of this poem that it is meritoriously short, and that the story does not require that painful investigation, and, oh terrible thought! a second perusal, to understand its plot and catastrophe. And as we have formerly, in our review of the Corsair, observed upon the uncertain and mysterious end of that hero's existence, his lordship has amply provided against the recurrence of such doubts in his reader's mind by shooting his renegado dead, and then blowing him up with gun-powder.. We have here therefore a complete certificate of his hero's death; and one might have hoped that after such a doubly sure disposition of our old enemy, we should never have had to encounter him again: but alas! he does appear again, and is beheaded in another poem in the same volume. After the discipline which he had undergone in the siege of Corinth, however he certainly does not appear in the same blustering and outrageous character in which he had before presented himself, "His face Deep scars of thunder had entrench'd, and care Sat on his faded cheek." In a word, he is more moderate and decent; he contents himself with simply defiling his father's bed, for which he peaceably submits to a public execution. And thus the Childe, whom we have identified through all his felonious disguises, is brought to his appropriate end, and poetical justice is satisfied. But we are not so well satisfied; and we will tell our readers why: because we have sons and daughters: but this is but a partial reason; let us add-because Britannia has sons and daughters, and in the duration of their characteristic virtue and modesty we behold the best pledge of the continuance of our happiness and greatness. We do not say that lord Byron means to interrupt this happiness or greatness, but we think that the false associations, the loose morality, and the atheistical character of his productions, dressed up in poetry not generally good, but often fascinating to female and youthful fancies, is doing a species of mischief which, if he could once be brought to view it in its real extent, he would probably regret and be anxious to remedy. We love the public mind, and feel tremblingly alive to its best interests. We love our country's freedom, and feel satisfied that purity of morals, and the sacred influence of our blessed religion, constitute its only true basis. We wish ardently, therefore, that we could prevail upon the noble poet whose works we are now considering to put in execution the promised retirement of his muse, and do justice to those powers which nature has bestowed upon him, by giving them their ample range over the wide circuit of contemplation that lies before him, selecting those objects which are worthy of his intellect, and connected with his own and his country's glory-which may lead him through nature to nature's God, and qualify him to open what in the language of the author of the Night Thoughts is called "the volume of the skies." "Open thy bosom, set thy wishes wide, If lord Byron could be persuaded to expand his capabili ties, and raise his poetical thoughts to their proper standard, he might soon perhaps be able to afford to abandon to their due condemnation all those miserable compositions which have flowed from his pen since the appearance of the Childe Harold, and give us a hero instead of a malefactor. Le Rodeur Frangais, ou les mœurs du jour. Orne de deux Gravures. The motto to this work is from Duclos: "Je me suis propose, en considerant les mœurs, de demeler dans la conduite des hommes quels en sont les principes." [From the Critical Review.] THIS work, entitled the French Rambler, in allusion to Dr. Johnson's Rambler, is a series of papers published at Brussels, of which the greater part appeared in the Quotidienne, and the remainder in the Journal General de France. The author had immediately in view as his model L'Hermite de la chausee d'Autin, which has been considered a happy imitation of our celebrated English Spectator, with the me rits of which the public is fully acquainted. MISCELLANEOUS SELECTIONS. [From the Champion.] THE PILGRIMAGE OF LIVING POETS TO THE STREAM OF CASTALY. "Who now shall give unto me words and sound SPENSER, B. 2. c. 10. I AM one of those unfortunate youths to whom the muse has glanced a sparkling of her light,-one of those who pant for distinction, but have not within them that immortal power which alone can command it. There are many,-some, sir, may be known to you,--who feel keenly and earnestly the eloquence of heart and mind in others, but who cannot, from some inability or unobtrusiveness, clearly express their own thoughts and feelings: whose lives are but long and silent dreams of romantic pleasure and poetic wonderment;--who almost adore the matchless fancies of genuine bards, and love them as interpreters and guardians of those visionary delights which are the perpetual inmates of their bosoms. I love the poets: I live in the light of their fancies. It is my best delight to wander forth on summer evenings, when the air is fresh and clear, and the leaves of the trees are making music with it, and the birds are busy with their wings, fluttering themselves to rest,—and a brook is murmuring along almost inaudibly, and the sun is going quietly down:-it is at this time delicious to muse over the works of our best bards. Some time last year, I had roamed in an evening like to one of those I have spoken of; and, after dwelling on the fairy beauties of Spenser, and from thence passing to the poets of my own time, and comparing the latter with some that had gone before, I cast myself on a romantic bank by a brook side. The silence around me,-save the home-returning bee with its "drowsy hum,"—and the moaning sound of distant cattle,-and the low, sullen gurgling of waters-lulled me into a sleep. The light of my thoughts gilded my dream;-my vision was a proof of mental existence when the bodily sense had passed away. Methought-(this, I believe, is the established language of dreams)-methought I was walking idly along a romantic vale, which was surrounded with majestic and rugged mountains;--a small stream struggled through it, and its waves seemed the brightest chrystal I had ever witnessed. I sat me down on its margin, which was rocky and beautiful-(so far my vision was copied directly from life).--As I mused, a female figure rose like a sil very mist from the waters, and advanced, with a countenance full of light, and a form of living air:--her garments floated round her like waves, and her hair basked on her shoulders "like sunny beams on alabaster roeks." There was a touch of immortality in her eyes,--and, indeed, her visage altogether was animated with a more than earthly glory. She approached me with smiles, and told me she was the guardian of the stream that flowed near,-and that the stream itself was the true Castalian, which so many “ rave of, though they know it not." I turned with fresh delight to gaze on the water; its music sounded heavenly to me,-I fancied that there was a pleasant dactylic motion in its waves. The Spirit said, that from the love I bore to her favourite, Spenser, she would permit me to see (myself unseen) the annual procession of living bards to fetch water from the stream on that day:--I looked her my thanks as well as I was able. She likewise informed me, that it was customary for each poet, as he received his portion, to say in what manner he intended to use it. The voice of the Spirit was such as fancy has heard in some wild and lovely spot among the hills or lakes of this world at twilight time:-I felt my soul full of music while listening to it, and held my breath in very excess of delight. Suddenly I heard the sound of approaching feet, and a confused mingling of voices;-the Spirit touched me into invisibility, and then softly faded into sunny air herself. In a little time I saw a motly crowd advancing confusedly to the stream:-I soon perceived that they were each provided with vessels to bear away some portion of the inmortal waters. They all paused at a little distance from the spot on which I was reclining; and then each walked singly and slowly from the throng and dipped his vessel in the blue wild wave of Castaly. I will ́endeavour to describe the manner and words of the most interesting of our living poets on this most interesting occasion. The air about the spot seemed brighter with their presence, and the waves danced along with a livelier delight:-Pegasus might be seen coursing the winds in wild rapture on one of the neighbouring mountains,--and sounds of glad and viewless wings were heard at intervals in the air, as if "troops of spirits were revelling over head and rejoicing at the scene. And first, methought, a lonely and melancholy figure slowly moved forth and silently filled a Grecian urn:-I knew by the look of nobility, and the hurried and turbulent plunge with which the vessel was dashed into the stream, that the owner was lord BYRON. He shed some tears while gazing on the water, and they seemed to make it purer and fairer:--he declared that he would keep the urn by him, untouched" for some years;"--but he had scarcely spoken, ere he had sprinkled forth some careless drops on the earth. He suddenly retreated. |