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of the seraglio scene; and other places to which I must decline making any farther reference.

rhymes to "necessary" in a third; and "had in her" to "Wladimir” in a fourth. As for the flow of his verse, read the following patches of dull prose:

"He died at fifty for a queen of forty; I wish their years had been fifteen and twenty, for then wealth, kingdoms, worlds, are but a sport; I remember when, though

had no great plenty of worlds to lose, yet still, to pay my court, I gave what I had -a heart;-as the world went I gave what was worth a world; for worlds could never restore me those pure feelings, gone for ever."

"I wonder (although Mars no doubt's a god I praise) if a man's name in a bulletin may make up for a bullet in his body? I hope this little question is no sin, because, though I am but a simple noddy, I think one Shakespeare puts the same

Alas! poor Lord Byron! His originality has been often questioned, and he has of late been compelled to admit, that the scissors, or a mental operation almost as mechanical as scissorswork, have stood him in good stead. In this new book of his, he honestly I confesses his obligation to a French description of the siege of Ismail. So far so good. But he has not the courage, or, if you will, the impudence, to avow his obligation to another French work, which has supplied his warm colouring. I may as well name the book at once-the Chevalier de Faublas. To such of your readers as know the book, there is no need of making any observation whatever on its contents-to those who do not, I may just mention that the meritorious Mr Benbow has suffered an accident before the courts of Westminster for being so liberal as to republish it. Now, from this filthy work, which I am really almost ashamed for having mentioned, are all the striking situations of Don Juan taken for instance, the very incident in the seraglio, &c. &c. &c. It is, however, fair to say, that Byron adopts here and there the filthy incidents, and, almost throughout, the filthy tone, of Faublas, without, in any one passage, (I mean of these three new cantos,) rivalling the sparkle of Louvet's wit-far less the elegance of Louvet's language.

Talking of language, it is indeed luce clarius that Lord B.'s residence in Italy has been much too long protracted. He has positively lost his ear, not only for the harmony of English verse, but for the very jingle of English rhymes. He makes will rhyme to will in stanza 33 of Canto VI. "Patience" is the rhyme to "fresh ones" in another place. "John Murray"

thought in the mouth of some one in his plays so doating, which many people pass for wits by quoting."

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Stop here for a moment, Christopher, just to admire the style in which one Shakespeare," and his "doating plays," are mentioned by this worshipper of Pope; and then go on to the following:

"Perceiving then no more the commandant of his own corps, nor even the corps, which had quite disappeared the Gods know how! (I can't account for everything which may look bad in history; but we at least may grant it was not marvellous that a mere lad, in search of glory, should look on before, nor care a pinch of snuff about his corps.")

Read these morceaus, (they are three veritable stanzas of Don Juan,) and doubt, if you can, that Byron has staid away rather too long, and that, if he means to write more English, it is high time he were back in England, to hear the language spoken.—It is very good of him to give alms to any poor Cockney he finds at sea abroad, without a tester in his fob-but hence

"Methinks these are the most tremendous words,
Since Menè, Menè, Tekel,' and 'Upharsin,'
Which hands or pens have ever traced of swords.
Heaven help me! I'm but little of a parson:
What Danicl read was short-hand of the Lord's,
Severe, sublime; the Prophet wrote no farce on
The fate of Nations ;-but this Russ so witty
Could rhyme, like Nero, o'er a burning city.”

forth he must actually guard against allowing them to utter any of their gibberish in his hearing. If he goes on in such culpable, however amiable, weaknesses, why, who shall swear that he won't come in time to rhyming "Morn," and "Fawn," like Barry Cornwall-" Dear" and "Cytherea," like John Keats-or "FOR'

and "STRAW," like the immortal LEIGH REX himself? Just imagine him already sunk to beginning a stanza, with such a line as "But Juan was quite 'A BROTH OF A BOY!!!""

Of the wit of these Cantos, deign to accept this one sample. The passage occurs in the description of Suwarrow's host.

"Then there were foreigners of much renown,
Of various nations, and all volunteers;
Not fighting for their country or its crown,
But wishing to be one day brigadiers;
Also to have the sacking of a town ;

A pleasant thing to young men at their years.
'Mongst them were several Englishmen of pith,
Sixteen called Thomson, and nineteen named Smith.

Jack Thomson and Bill Thomson ;-all the rest
Had been called Jemmy,' after the great bard;
I don't know whether they had arms or crest,
But such a godfather's as good a card.
Three of the Smiths were Peters; but the best
Amongst them all, hard blows to inflict or ward,
Was he, since so renowned in country quarters
At Halifax ;' but now he served the Tartars.

The rest were Jacks and Gills, and Wills and Bills;
But when I've added that the elder Jack Smith
Was born in Cumberland among the hills,

And that his father was an honest blacksmith,

I've said all I know of a name that fills

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Three lines of the despatch in taking Schmacksmith,'
A village of Moldavia's waste, wherein

He fell, immortal in a bulletin."

*

"A habit rather blameable, which is

That of despising those we combat with,
Common in many cases, was in this

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The cause of killing Tchitchitzkoff and Smith;
One of the valorous Smiths' whom we shall miss
Out of those nineteen who late rhymed to pith ;'
But 'tis a name so spread o'er Sir' and' Madam,'
That one would think the FIRST who bore it' ADAM."

And then to crown the whole, take the stanza that immediately follows this about "Tchitchitzkoff and Smith."

"The Russian batteries were incomplete,

Because they were constructed in a hurry;

Thus the same cause which makes a verse want feet,
And throws a cloud o'er Longman and John Murray,

When the sale of new books is not so fleet

As they who print them think is necessary,
May likewise put off for a time what story
Sometimes calls murder,' and at others glory."

These are the mumblings of a man, whose impressions of Joseph Miller have been weakened by long absence! Never was such poor, poor stuff-and

VOL. XIV.

I am almost ashamed to think of myself tacking the mention of such contemptible trash to a notice, however hasty and imperfect, of such a work

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as the Quarterly Review. Southey, Gifford, &c. have their faults-above all, they have their affectations-but, Heaven preserve us! what a plunge it is from their worst to the best that even Lord Byron seems capable of giving us since his conjunction with these deluded drivellers of Cockaigne! There we have at least strong English prejudices delivered in the strong clear language of England! Here, what have we got? Stupid French books translated, not into stupid English, but into stupid Cockneyeze-wit, that won't make the Duke of Sussex himself chuckle-verse, that Charles Young himself could not read, so as to produce anything like the effect of musical cadence-jests, that even the Laureate will not feel-in short, to say all that can be said-a book which, though written by Lord Byron, is published by, without elevating the brotherhood of, the Hunts!

I do not mean to say that there are not some half-dozen or two of stanzas not quite unworthy of the better days of Lord Byron. There are. But I have already occupied far too many of your columns with a production which, with fewer exceptions than anything that has been published this year, (save only perhaps the Liber Amoris,) by any man of the least pretension and talent of any kind, appears deserving of sovereign and universal neglect "CHRISTIAN, OR THE ISLAND," contained two pages, and just two of Byronian Poetry-all the rest was mere translation, and generally feeble translation. This contains no passage equal to the two I allude to in Christiannone whatever. It contains nothing that the moment it is read makes everybody exclaim, "Well, say what you please of the book-but here is a stanza which no living man but Lord Byron could have written." There is nothing of this class here there was in the worst of the preceding cantos; and, in one word, Don Juan appears, like Lord Byron himself, to be getting into his dotage before his time.

I don't remember anything so com

plete as the recent fall of Lord Byron's literary name. I don't mean to insinuate that people of taste think less highly now, than they did five, six, seven, or eight years ago, of the genius of Byron, in his true works of genius. But what I mean to say is this, that his name can no more sell a book now, than Jeremy Bentham's. Christian, for instance, did not sell a bit better than any new poem of Mr Milman's, or Mrs Hemans's, would do

and this continuation of Don Juan is obliged to be sold for a shilling, and is very moderately taken off even at that rate, although, of course, it has all the advantage of being believed to be a licentious thing. Never, to be sure, was a more egregious tumble. If it were only to check the joy which must prevail in a certain quarter, (which I need not name,) if this goes on-Lord Byron ought really to pull up, and make at least one more exertion worthy of himself, and of the original expectations of a reading public, that has unwillingly deserted, and that would most gladly return to him, even after all that has happened.

I do not believe Lord Byron to be a bad man-I mean a deliberately, resolvedly wicked man. I know him to be a man of great original power and genius, and, from report, I know him to be a kind friend where his friendship is wanted. I cannot consent to despair of Lord Byron-but as to his late publications, he may depend upon it, they are received by the people of Britain "with as much coldness and indifference," (to use an expression in one of Cobbett's late Registers,) "as if they were as many ballads from Grub Street, or plays from Lord John Russel."-He must adopt an entire change of system, or give the thing up altogether. So thinks sincerely, and in the spirit of kindness and of regret, much more than in any other spirit,

Yours ever,
Dear Christopher,
T. T.

THE INHABITED WELL.

From the Hindoostanee.

THE name of Mahummud, as the founder of a false religion, is familiar to every one; and, in this view, his history has been studied, and his impostures exposed by philosophers and divines. But it has been, perhaps, less remarked, that, among the vulgar of those nations where his religion is professed, he is better known as the hero of a series of romantic tales, as the King Arthur, in short, of eastern chivalry, than as the saint or lawgiver. His friends and companions (ushab) are exactly the knights of his round-table; and their common exploits have been the subject of as much rugged rhyme as those of the champions of Christendom. The Koran, which contains what is really known concerning Mahummud, never having been profaned by translation, has left room, among his ignorant followers, for a plentiful crop of romance; and of this circumstance the ballad-chroniclers of the East have not omitted to take due advantage. Every exploit of which the actor was a name, either obsolete or unknown, has found a ready hero in this favourite of their devotion; and many a pearl which glittered of old in the romantic diadems of Rustam, Secunder, or the forgotten heroes of Ind, has been translated to a situation where it may shine to more advantage in the tiara of Mahummud. Some of these gems, it must be confessed, are but "barbaric pearl;" but many appear to be really interesting, and will bear a comparison with anything of the same kind in European literature. The following is one which has frequently amused me, and which I translated from a manuscript given me by an old Moollah from Surat; the story is familiar to the Indian Mussulmans, and perhaps also to those of other countries.

There are many passages in this, as in other specimens of Oriental narrative, whose extravagance at once startles a European imagination out of the dream of reality which more gentle management might have prolonged to the end of the fiction. Most of these, as they are not necessary to the general outline of the story, I have retrenched or changed; the rest, without much violating the better regulations of European literature, will still give a sufficient specimen of what is required from the poets of Hindoostan* to gratify the wild taste of their countrymen.

SHAGIRD.

THE INHABITED WELL.

PART I.

When mid-day's fierce and cloudless sun
Illumed the desert's sand,
Mahummud pitch'd his spreading tents,
To rest his wearied band.

From dawn till noon their march had sped,
Beneath the scorching sun;

For April's fresh'ning spring was pass'd,
The summer's drought begun.

It may amuse some readers to trace similarities between languages so remote as the Hindoostanee and vulgar Scots. The following are a few of the more striking coincidences :

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