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"For everything there is at sixes and se- musically to the breeze. Even Cap

vens,

'Case this is the washing-day; The spalpeens are squalling, your mother is bawling,

And tugging and rubbing away." "Och!” cries I in anger, 'tween cowld and

sheer hunger,

"Bad luck to the washing-day! Dirraloo, gragh! (Follows a dying howl.) "Devil fly with the wash-tub away!" In this noisy, yet enlivening manner, were all hands so busily employed during most part of the night, that the returning dawn beheld his Majesty's sloop, the Tottumfog, jogging casily along like a moving slop-shop at Rag-Fair-shirts, frocks, trowsers, blankets, bags, and hammocks, in every possible variety of repair and colour, twittering from every part of her most

tain Switchem, when he came on deck, seemed highly gratified at the liberal manner in which his orders had been executed; and the weather continuing steady and agreeable, the remainder of the day was employed in giving a thorough scrubbing and fresh arrangement to the movables of both decks. This important business having been also accomplished, and the lower deck ventilated and allowed to dry, the clothes and hammocks were piped down and stowed away, the topsails fresh reefed, and the vessel made otherwise snug for the night-and the watch being at last called, our hero and his watchmates betook themselves gladly to repose.

S.

ODOHERTY ON DON JUAN, CANTOS IX. X. XI.

DEAR NORTH, I have a great respect both for old Tickler and yourself, but now and then you both disquiet me with little occasional bits of lapses into the crying sin of the age humbug! What could possess him to write, and you to publish, that absurd eritique-if indeed it be worthy of any such name upon the penult batch of Don Juan? The ancient scribe must have read those cantos when he was crop-sick, and had snapped his fiddle-string. You must never have read them at all.

Call things wicked, base, vile, obscene, blasphemous; run your tackle to its last inch upon these scores, but never say that they are stupid when they are not. I cannot suffer this sort of cant from you. Leave it to Wordsworth to call Voltaire "a dull scoffer." Leave it to the British Review to talk of "the dotage" of Lord Byron. Depend upon it, your chief claim to merit as a critic has always been your justice to INTELLECT. I cannot bear to see you parting with a shred of this high reputation. It was you "that first praised Shelley as he deserved to be praised." Mr Tickler himself said so in his last admirable letter to you. It was in your pages that justice was first done to Lamb and to Coleridge-greatest of all, it was through and by you that the public opinion was first turned in regard to the poetry of Wordsworth himself. These are things which ne

ver can be forgotten; these are your true and your most honourable triumphs. Do not, I beseech you, allow your claim to this noble distinction to be called in question. Do not let it be said, that even in one instance you have suffered any prejudices whatever, no matter on what proper feelings they may have been bottomed, to interfere with your candour as a judge of intellectual exertion.-Distinguish as you please: brand with the mark of your indignation whatever offends your feelings, moral, political, or religiousbut "nothing extenuate." If you mention a book at all, say what it really is. Blame Don Juan; blame Faublas; blame Candide; but blame them for what really is deserving of blame. Stick to your own good old rule-abuse Wickedness, but acknowledge Wit.

In regard to such a man as Byron, this, it must be evident, is absolutely necessary that is, if you really wish, which you have always said you do, to be of any use to him. Good heavens ! Do you imagine that people will believe three cantos of DON JUAN to be unredeemedly and uniformly DULL, merely upon your saying so, without proving what you say by quotation? No such things need be expected by you, North, far less by any of your coadjutors.

I maintain, and have always maintained, that Don Juan is, without exception, the first of Lord Byron's

works. It is by far the most original in point of conception. It is decidedly original in point of tone, [for to talk of the tone of Berni, &c. being in the least like this, is pitiable stuff: Any old Italian of the 15th or 16th century write in the same tone with Lord Byron! Stuff! stuff!-It contains the finest specimens of serious poetry he has ever written; and it contains the finest specimens of ludicrous poetry that our age has witnessed. Frere may have written the stanza earlier; he may have written it more carefully, more musically if you will; but what is he to Byron? Where is the sweep, the pith, the soaring pinion, the lavish luxury, of genius revelling in strength? No, sir; Don Juan, say the canting world what it will, is destined to hold a permanent rank in the literature of our country. It will always be referred to as furnishing the most powerful picture of that vein of thought, (no matter how false and bad,) which distinguishes a great portion of the thinking people of our time. You and I disagree with them -we do not think so; we apprehend that to think so, is to think greenly, rashly, and wickedly; but who can deny, that many, many thousands, do think so? Who can deny, that that is valuable in a certain way which paints the prevailing sentiment of a large proportion of the people of any given age in the world? Or, who, that admits these things, can honestly hesitate to admit that Don Juan is a great work -a work that must last? I cannot.

And, after all, say the worst of Don Juan, that can with fairness be said of it, what does the thing amount to? Is it more obscene than Tom Jones? -Is it more blasphemous than Voltaire's novels? In point of fact, it is not within fifty miles of either of them: and as to obscenity, there is more of that in the pious Richardson's pious Pamela, than in all the novels and poems that have been written since,

The whole that can with justice be said of Byron, as to these two great charges, is, that he has practised in this age something of the licence of the age of our grandfathers. In doing so, he has acted egregiously amiss. The things were bad, nobody can doubt that, and we had got rid of them; and it did

not become a man of Byron's genius to try to make his age retrograde in anything, least of all in such things as these. He also has acted most unwisely and imprudently in regard to himself. By offending the feelings of his age, in regard to points of this nature, he has undone himself as a popular writer.-I don't mean to say that he has done so for ever-Mercy and Repentance forbid! but he has done so most effectually for the present. People make excuses for Fielding and Voltaire, because they don't know in how far these men may have been acted upon by circumstances: but people will not make such excuses for Lord Byron, because they know, we all know, that he was educated among the same sort of people as ourselves, that he must know and feel the same things to be wrong which his neighbours know and feel to be so. He, therefore, is no longer a popular author. But, and here I come back to my question-Is he no longer a great author? Has his genius deserted him along with his prudence? Is his Hippocrene lazy as well as impure? Has he ceased, in other words, to be Byron, or is he only Byron playing mad tricks?

The latter is my opinion, and I propose to convince you, in case you are not already of the same mind, by quoting a few passages from the other three cantos that have just appeared-and which I humbly conceive to be the very best, in so far as talent is concerned, of all that have as yet come forth. I desire you to match me, if you can, the things I shall extract from this dull work. I should be glad to know where you can shew me anything better than this. Read it as I send it to you. I have scored out abundantly, but I have added nothing; and I defy you to say the description is not admirable, or to mention anybody, except Byron, who could have penned it.

"Suppose him then at Petersburgh; suppose

That pleasant capital of painted Snows; Suppose him in an handsome uniform;

A scarlet coat, black facings, a long plume,

Waving, like sails new shiver'd in a storm, Over a cock'd hat in a crowded room,

* We mention MR ODOHERTY for one.-C. N.

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We do not believe anything about Leigh Hunt's having interpolated Don Juan; yet candour must admit, that the mention of the yellow breeches here is startling.

Our own opinion is, that Byron put them in as a quizz upon the Cockney, just to see what he would swallow.-C. N.

"He was the 'grande passion' of the grande Catherine;-sce her Lives, under the head of Lanskoi.'"

A lover as had cost her many a tear, And yet but made a middling grenadier.

"Catherine, I say, was very glad to see The handsome herald, on whose plumage sat

Victory; and, pausing as she saw him kneel

With his dispatch, forgot to break the seal.

" Then recollecting the whole Empress,

nor

Forgetting quite the woman (which composed

At least three parts of this great whole)

she tore

The letter open with an air which posed The Court, that watch'd each look her

visage wore,

Until a royal smile at length disclosed Fair weather for the day. Though rather spacious,

Her face was noble, her eyes fine, mouth gracious.

"Great joy was hers, or rather joys; the first

Was a ta'en city, thirty thousand slain. Glory and triumph o'er her aspect burst,

As an East Indian Sunrise on the main. These quench'd a moment her Ambition's thirst

So Arab Deserts drink in Summer's rain:

In vain!-As fall the dews on quenchless sands,

Blood only serves to wash Ambition's hands!

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Ourselves, a singer, dancer, much in fashion,

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Or dutchess, princess, Empress, deigns to prove'

('Tis Pope's phrase) a great longing, though a rash one,

For one especial person out of many, Makes us believe ourselves as good as any."

The following is part of an apostrophe to Mr Francisculus Jeffrey, whose prosing Review of April was a year, his Lordship really seems to have been a little touched by.

"The lawyer and the critic but behold The baser sides of literature and life, And nought remains unseen, but much untold,

By those who scour those double vales of strife.

While common men grow ignorantly old, The lawyer's brief is like the surgeon's

knife,

Dissecting the whole inside of a question, And with it all the process of digestion.

"A legal broom's a moral chimney

sweeper,

And that's the reason he himself's so dirty;

Like flowers well water'd after a long The endless soot bestows a tint far

drouth:

deeper

*"* Query, suit? Printer's Devil."

Than can be hid by altering his shirt;
he

Retains the sable stains of the dark

creeper,

At least some twenty-nine do out of
thirty,

In all their habits ;-not so you, I own;
As Cæsar wore his robe you wear your
gown."

What is the meaning of the compliment in the two last of these lines? Jeffrey wears his gown as Julius did his robe! The only particular mention that I remember of Cæsar's robe is, that he used it to cover his fall. In the language of old Plutarch, "they surrounded him in such a manner, that whatever way he turned he saw nothing but steel gleaming in his face, and met nothing but wounds. Like some savage beast, attacked by the hunters, he found every hand lifted against him. Some say he opposed the rest, and continued struggling and crying out, till he perceived the sword of Brutus; but that then he DREW HIS ROBE OVER HIS FACE, AND YIELDED TO HIS FATE."(LANGHORNE'S Plutarch, vol. v. p. 362.) What, then, is the meaning of Byron? Is it that so long as Jeffrey was attacked by "the rest of the critical hunters," he continued struggling, but that when he saw the sword of the god-like Brutus North, Esq., he yield- · ed to his fate, and drew his gown over his face-that is, gave up Blue and Yellow, and slunk into the mere Advocate! This, certainly, is the natural construction of the passage, and most true it certainly is, that, comparing very great things to very small ones,"as Julius wore his robe, Jeff wears his gown."

The following account of Juan's life at Petersburgh, is, I think extremely good:-

"About this time, as might have been anticipated,

Seduced by youth and dangerous examples,

Don Juan grew, I fear, a little dissipated; Which is a sad thing, and not only tramples

On our fresh feelings, but-as being par

ticipated

With all kinds of incorrigible samples Of frail humanity—must make us selfish, And shut our souls up in us like a shellfish.

This we pass over. We will also pass The usual progress of intrigues between 13

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Unequal matches, such as are, alas !
A young Lieutenant's with a not old
Queen,

But one who is not so youthful as she was
In all the royalty of sweet seventeen.
Sovereigns may sway materials, but not
matter,

AND WRINKLES, THE DD DEMOCRATS,
WON'T FLATTER.

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In this gay clime of bear-skins black and furry

Which (though I hate to say a thing that's bitter)

Peep out sometimes, when things are in a flurry,

Through all the 'purple and fine linen,'

fitter

For Babylon's than Russia's royal harlot

And neutralize her outward shew of Scarlet.

"And this same state we won't describe: we would

Perhaps from hearsay, or from recollection ;

But getting nigh grim Dante's obscure

wood,'

That horrid Equinox, that hateful section

Of human years, that half-way house, that rude

Hut, whence wise travellers drive with circumspection

Life's sad post horses o'er the dreary frontier

Of age, and looking back to youth, give one tear ;

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