tious polishing of pretty expressions; and we really think that the brilliant success which has rewarded his disdain of those paltry artifices, should put to shame for ever that puling and self-admiring race, who can live through half a volume on the stock of a single thought, and expatiate over diverse fair quarto pages with the details of one tedious description. In Lord Byron, on the contrary, we have a perpetual stream thick-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 frequently realise all that is said of inspiration.

With all these undoubted claims to our admiration, however, it is impossible to deny that the noble author before us has still something to learn, and a good deal to correct. He is frequently abrupt and careless, and sometimes obscure. There are marks, occasionally, of effort and straining after an emphasis, which is generally spontaneous; and, above all, there is far too great a monotony in the moral colouring of his pictures, and too much repetition of the same sentiments and maxims. He delights too exclusively in the delineation of a certain morbid exaltation of character and of feeling a sort of demoniacal sublimity, not without some traits of the ruined archangel. He is haunted almost perpetually with the image of a being feeding and fed upon 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 obduracy-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 and slavish devotion: yet envying, by fits, the very 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. Such is the person with whom we are called upon almost exclusively to sympathise in all the greater productions of this distinguished writer :-in Childe Harold, in the Corsair, in Lara, in the Siege of Corinth, in Parisina, and in most of the smaller pieces,

It is impossible to represent such a character better than Lord Byron has done in all these productions, or indeed to represent any thing more terrible in its anger, or more attractive in its relenting. In point of effect, we readily admit, that no one character can be more poetical or impressive. But it is really too much to find the scene perpetually filled by one character, not only in all the acts of each several drama, but in all the different dramas of the series; and grand and impressive as it is, we feel at last that these very qualities make some relief more indispensable, and oppress the spirits of ordinary mortals with too deep an impression of awe and repulsion. There is too much guilt, in short, and too much gloom in the leading character; and though it be a fine thing to gaze, now and then, on stormy seas, and thunder-shaken mountains, we should prefer passing our days in sheltered valleys, and by the murmur of calmer

waters.

We are aware that these metaphors may be turned against us-and that, without metaphor, it may be said that men do not pass their days in reading poetry-and that, as they may look into Lord Byron only about as often as they look abroad upon tempests, they have no more reason to complain of him for being grand and gloomy, than to complain of the same qualities in the glaciers and volcanoes which they go so far to visit. Painters, too, it may be said, have often gained great reputation by their representations of tigers and other ferocious animals, or of caverns and banditti; and poets should be allowed, without reproach, to indulge in analogous exercises. We are far from thinking that there is no weight in these considerations, and feel how plausibly it may be said, that we have no better reason for a great part of our complaint, than that an author, to whom we are already very greatly indebted, has chosen rather to please himself, than us, in the use he makes of his talents.

This, no doubt, seems both unreasonable and ungrateful. But it is nevertheless true, that a public benefactor becomes a debtor to the public; and is, in some degree, responsible for the employment of those gifts which seem to be conferred upon him, not merely for his own delight, but for the delight and improvement of his fellows through all generations. Independent of this, however, we think there is a reply to the apology. A great living poet is not like a distant volcano, or an occasional tempest. He is a volcano in

the heart of our land, and a cloud that hangs over our dwellings; and we have some reason to complain, if, instead of genial warmth and grateful shade, he voluntarily darkens and inflames our atmosphere with perpetual fiery explosions and pitchy vapours. Lord Byron's poetry, in short, is too attractive and too famous to lie dormant or inoperative; and, therefore, if it produce any painful or pernicious effects, there will be murmurs, and ought to be suggestions of alteration. Now, though an artist may draw fighting tigers and hungry lions in as lively and natural a way as he can, without giving any encouragement to human ferocity, or even much alarm to human fear, the case is somewhat different, when a poet represents men with tiger-like dispositionsand yet more so, when he exhausts the resources of his genius to make this terrible being interesting and attractive, and to represent all the lofty virtues as the natural allies of his ferocity. It is still worse when he proceeds to show that all these precious gifts of dauntless courage, strong affection, and high imagination, are not only akin to guilt, but the parents of misery; and that those only have any chance of tranquillity or happiness in this world, whom it is the object of his poetry to make us shun and despise.

These, it appears to us, are not merely errors in taste, but perversions of morality; and, as a great poet is necessarily a moral teacher, and gives forth his ethical lessons, in general, with far more effect and authority than any of his graver brethren, he is peculiarly liable to the censures reserved for those who turn the means of improvement to purposes of corruption.

It may, no doubt, be said that poetry in general tends less to the useful than the splendid qualities of our nature-that a character poetically good has long been distinguished from one that is morally so-and that, ever since the time of Achilles, our sympathies, on such occasions, have been chiefly engrossed by persons whose deportment is by no means exemplary, and who in many points approach to the temperament of Lord Byron's ideal hero. There is some truth in this suggestion also. But other poets, in the first place, do not allow their favourites so outrageous a monopoly of the glory and interest of the piece, and sin less therefore against the laws either of poetical or distributive justice. In the second place, their heroes are not, generally, either so bad or so good as Lord Byron's, and do not indeed very much

exceed the standard of truth and nature, in either of the extremes. His, however, are as monstrous and unnatural as centaurs, and hippogriffs, and must ever figure in the eye of sober reason as so many bright and hateful impossibilities. But the most important distinction is, that the other poets who deal in peccant heroes, neither feel nor express that ardent affection for them, which is visible in the whole of this author's delineations; but merely make use of them as necessary agents in the extraordinary adventures they have to detail, and persons whose mingled vices and virtues are requisite to bring about the catastrophe of their story. In Lord Byron, however, the interest of the story, where there happens to be one, which is not always the case, is uniformly postponed to that of the character itself, into which he enters so deeply, and with so extraordinary a fondness, that he generally continues to speak in its language, after it has been dismissed from the stage; and to inculcate, on his own authority, the same sentiments which had been previously recommended by its example. We do not consider it as unfair, therefore, to say that Lord Byron appears to us to be the zealous apostle of a certain fierce and magnificent misanthropy, which has already saddened his poetry with too deep a shade, and not only led to a great misapplication of great talents, but contributed to render popular some very false estimates of the constituents of human happiness and merit.-JEFFREY.

NAPOLEON AND WELLINGTON.

Napoleon and Wellington having risen, by the common consent of men, to the highest rank on their respective sides in the great Revolutionary contest; and the awful strife having been finally determined under their guidance on a single field, like that between Rome and Carthage under the banners of Scipio and Hannibal, the attention of men, to the end of the world, will be forcibly drawn to their characters. We know, after the lapse of two thousand years, with what eagerness we yet dwell on those of the Roman and Carthaginian leaders who met at Zama; and we may anticipate with confidence a similar undying interest in the comparison between the British and French heroes who combated at Waterloo. Happy, indeed, if the pen of the historian could

keep pace with the greatness of the subject, and the English language would afford the means of painting, in a few touches, with the hand of Livy or Tacitus, the salient point in the minds of those whose deeds are for ever engraven on the records of mankind!

Napoleon and Wellington were not merely individual characters; they were the types of the powers which they respectively headed in the contest. Napoleon had brighter genius, Wellington superior judgment; the former combated with greater energy, the latter with more perseverance. Rapid in design, instant in execution, the strokes of the French hero fell like the burning thunderbolt: cautious in counsel, yet firm in action, the resources of the British champion multiplied, like the vigour of vegetation, after the withering stroke had fallen. No campaign of Wellington's equals, in energy and activity, those of Napoleon in Italy and in France: none of Napoleon's approaches, in foresight and wisdom, that of Wellington at Torres Vedras. The vehemence of the French emperor would have exhausted, in a single season, the whole resources which, during the war, were at the disposal of the English general; the caution of Wellington would have alienated, in the very beginning, the troops which overflowed with the passions of the Revolution. Ardour and onset were alike imposed on the former by his situation, and suggested by his disposition: foresight and perseverance were equally dictated to the latter by his necessities, and in unison with his character. The one wielded at pleasure the military resources of the half of Europe, and governed a nation heedless of consequences, covetous of glory, reckless of slaughter: the other led the forces of a people distrustful of its prowess, avaricious of its blood, but invincible in its determination. And the result, both in the general war and final struggle, was in entire conformity with this distinction. Wellington retired in the outset before the fierce assault of the French legions, but he saw them, for the first time since the Revolution, permanently recoil in defeat from the rocks of Torres Vedras: he was at first repeatedly expelled from Spain, but at last he drove the invaders with disgrace across the Pyrenees. He was in the beginning assailed unawares, and wellnigh overpowered in Flanders; but in the end he baffled all Napoleon's efforts, and, rising up with the strength of a giant, crushed at once his army and his empire on the field of Waterloo.