With such an aspect, by his colours blent,
When from his beauty-breathing pencil born,
(Except that thou hast nothing to repent)
The Magdalen of Guido saw the morn―

Such seem'st thou-but how much more excellent!
With nought Remorse can claim

scorn.

nor Virtue

December 17. 1813. (1)

SONNET, TO THE SAME.

THY cheek is pale with thought, but not from woe,
And yet so lovely, that if Mirth could flush
Its rose of whiteness with the brightest blush,
My heart would wish away that ruder glow :
And dazzle not thy deep-blue eyes — but, oh!`
While gazing on them sterner eyes will gush,
And into mine my mother's weakness rush,
Soft as the last drops round heaven's airy bow.
For, through thy long dark lashes low depending,
The soul of melancholy Gentleness

Gleams like a seraph from the sky descending,
Above all pain, yet pitying all distress;
At once such majesty with sweetness blending,
I worship more, but cannot love thee less.

December 17. 1818.

(1) ["Redde some Italian, and wrote two sonnets. I never wrote but one sonnet before, and that was not in earnest, and many years ago, as an exercise- and I will never write another. They are the most puling, petrifying, stupidly platonic compositions." Diary, 1813.-E.]

FROM THE PORTUGUESE.

66 TU MI CHAMAS.

In moments to delight devoted,

66

My life!" with tenderest tone, you cry ; Dear words! on which my heart had doted, If youth could neither fade nor die.

To death even hours like these must roll,
Ah! then repeat those accents never ;
Or change" my life!" into " my soul!"
Which, like my love, exists for ever.

ANOTHER VERSION.

You call me still your life.-Oh! change the word-
Life is as transient as the inconstant sigh:
Say rather I'm your soul; more just that name,
For, like the soul, my love can never die.

HINTS FROM HORACE:

BEING AN ALLUSION IN ENGLISH VERSE TO THE EPISTLE "AD " AD PISONES, DE ARTE POETICA," AND INTENDED AS A SEQUEL TO 66 ENGLISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS."

Reddere quæ ferrum valet, exsors ipsa secandi.”

Ho De Arte Poet.

'Rhymes are difficult things-they are stubborn things, sir."

FIELDING'S Amelia.

[Authors are apt, it is said, to estimate their performances more according to the trouble they have cost themselves, than the pleasure they afford to the public; and it is only in this way that we can pretend to account for the extraordinary value which Lord Byron attached, even many long years after they were written, to these "Hints from Horace." The business of translating Horace has hitherto been a hopeless one; - and notwithstanding the brilliant cleverness of some passages, in both Pope's and Swift's Imitations of him, there had been, on the whole, very little to encourage any one to meddle seriously even with that less difficult department. It is, comparatively, an easy affair to transfer the effect, or something like the effect, of the majestic declamations of Juvenal; but the Horatian satire is cast in a mould of such exquisite delicacy-uniting perfect ease with perfect elegance throughout. -as has hitherto defied all the skill of the moderns. Lord Byron, however, having composed this piece at Athens, in 1811, and brought it home in the same desk with the two first cantos of " Childe Harold," appears to have, on his arrival in London, contemplated its publication as far more likely to increase his reputation than that of his original poem. Perhaps Milton's preference of the "Paradise Regained" over the "Paradise Lost" is not a more decisive example of the extent to which a great author may mistake the source of his greatness. Lord Byron was prevented from publishing these lines, by a feeling which, considering his high notion of their merit, does him honour. By accident, or nearly so, the "Harold" came out before the "Hints; "--and the reception of the former was so flattering to Lord Byron, that it could scarcely fail to take off, for the time, the edge of his appetite for literary bitterness. In short, he found himself mixing constantly in society with persons who had from good sense, or good-nature, or from both overlooked the petulancies of his "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," and felt, as he said, that he should be "heaping coals of fire on his head" if he were to persist in bringing forth a continuation of his juvenile lampoon. Nine years had passed ere he is found writing thus to Mr. Murray :-" Get from Mr. Hobhouse, and send me, a proof of my "Hints from Horace:" it has now the nonum prematur in annum complete for its production. I have a notion that, with some omissions of names and passages, it will do; and I could put my late observations for Pope amongst the notes. As far as versification goes, it is good; and, in looking back at what I wrote about that period, I am astonished to see how little I have trained on. I wrote better then than now; but that comes of my having fallen into the atrocious bad taste of the times." On hearing, however, that, in Mr. Hobhouse's opinion, the iambics would require "a good deal of slashing" to suit the times, the notion of printing them was once more abandoned. They were first published, therefore, in 1881, seven years after the poet's death.-E.]