Nor sought he friend to counsel or condole,

Whate'er this grief mote be, which he could not control. "And none did love him, though to hall and bower

He gathered reveilers from far and near."

In such mood the "Childe" sets sail; and, having “seized his harp," when "the sun was sinking on the sea," and fleeting shores receded from the sight, he sings a very pathetick little ode, from which we have space to extract only the 9th stanza, as descriptive of his very cheerless state and truly romantick feelings.

"And now I'm in the world alone,
Upon the wide, wide sea:

But why should I for others groan,
When none will sigh for me?
Perchance my dog will whine in vain,
Till fed by stranger hands;
But long ere I come back again,
He'd tear me where he stands."

(C man deIt will be seen by this, that not only, like Hamlet, lights not him, nor woman either," but that no rash transfer of his regards has been made to the brute creation. We are, we confess, astonished, that when he sailed by Ithaca, or, as he poetically describes it,

Where sad Penelope o'erlooked the wave

he did not either expunge this stanza, or tremble at the angry ghost of Ulysses.

Lisbon, Cintra, and the surrounding scenery, are powerfully de scribed in the occasionally abrupt manner of Spenser.

"The horrid crags, by topling convent crowned,

The cork-trees hoar that clothe the shaggy steep,
The mountain moss by scorching skies embrowned,
The sunken glen, whose sunless shrubs must weep,

The tender azure of the unruffled deep,

The orange tints that gild the greenest bough,

The torrents that from cliff to valley leap,

So Spenser:

The vine on high, the willow branch below,

Mixed in one mighty scene, with varied lustre glow." p. 17.

"The willow worne of forlorne paramours,

The eugh obedient to the bender's will,

The berch," &c.

Book I. Canto I.

The "Childe" was not likely to pass by Cintra without some characteristick reference to that convention, of which, it must be admitted, that no satisfactory solution has ever been given to the country. For this he may be pardoned; and we really began to have hopes of him when we read, that in his mountain wanderings here,

"he learned to moralize, And conscious reason whispered to despise

His early youth."

He then strikingly describes the bounds of the rival realms of Spain and Portugal; bounds so slight, as to explain, if the general

lust of power did not, the constant persuasion, on the part of the strongest of these powers, that the same sceptre should sway both countries.

"But these between a silver streamlet glides,

And scarce a name distinguishes the brook,
Though rival kingdoms press its verdant sides.
Here leans the idle shepherd on his crook,
And vacant on the ripling waves doth look,
That peaceful still 'twixt bitterest foemen flow;
For proud each peasant, as the noblest duke;

Weli doth the Spanish hind the difference know

"Twixt him and Lusian slave, the lowest of the low." p. 24.

Is there not, however, some discordancy between the meek vacancy of the shepherd, in one part of the stanza, and the proud consciousness of superiority of the peasant in the other?

As it is impossible to tread upon any acre of these desolated countries without encountering war; so a poet must be expected to describe it. The following personification of battle is bold, and makes us doubly thankful for the waters which roll between ourselves and the continent of Europe.

"Red Battle stamps his foot, and nations feel the shock.
"Lo! where the giant on the mountain stands,

His blood-red tresses deepening in the sun;
With death-shot glowing in his fiery hands,
And eye that scorcheth all it glares upon;
Restless it rolls, now fixed, and now anon
Flashing afar-and at his iron feet

Destruction cowers, to mark what deeds are done." p. 27.

After this, probably somewhat exhausting, burst of poetry, the bard turns aside to refresh himself with a few stanzas of indignant satire upon war and warriours, and Collins's exquisite eulogy upon the brave. The preceding part of the stanza is too fine to

omit.

"Three hosts combine to offer sacrifice;

Three tongues prefer strange orisons on high,
Three gaudy standards flout the pale-blue skies;
The shouts are France, Spain, Albion, Victory!
The foe, the victim, and the fond ally

That fights for all, but ever fights in vain,
Are met-as if at home they could not die

TO FEED THE CROW ON TALAVERA'S PLAIN,
And fertilize the field that each pretends to gain.
"There shall they rot-Ambition's honoured fools
Yes honour decks the turf that wraps their clay!
Vain sophistry!-in them behold the tools,

The broken tools-that tyrants cast away

By myriads, when they dare to pave their way

With human hearts-to what?-a dream alone," &c. &c. p. 29.

We are not disposed to quarrel with this passage merely for its hostility to war, but surely such undistinguishing declamation can tend to no good. Surely, also, Lord Byron is unjust to his country in thus characterizing her present war; a war not sought by us, but forced upon us; a war in which the " tyrant" George III. did not compel his people to engage; but in undertaking which, Ke merely complied with their general voice.

The description of Morena's dusky height, with "The holstered steed beneath the shed of thatch,

The ball-piled pyramid, the ever-blazing match,"

in the 51st stanza; and of " the Spanish maid," who " all unsexed," "stalks with Minerva's step where Mars might fear to tread," in the 54th stanza; are scarcely inferiour, we think, to any thing in that species of writing in the language, except, indeed, it be these lines:

"Her lover sinks-she sheds no ill-timed tear;

Her chief is slain-she fills his fatal post;
Her fellows flee-she checks their base career;
The foe retires-she heads the sallying host.-
Who can appease like her, a lover's ghost?
Who can avenge so well a leader's fall?

What maid retrieve, when man's flushed hope is lost?
Who hang so fiercely on the flying Gaul,

Foiled by a woman's hand, before a battered wall?" p. 36.

The history then conveys us to Seville and Cadiz, of which the author paints the vices in colours so strong, as almost to make us believe for a moment that he hates them. The Sunday amusement of the last city is a bull-fight, which he contrasts with what he seems to imagine the universal employments of the middle orders of his own country on that sacred day. We trust he might have made the contrast stronger, by describing multitudes who on that day abstain from all secular amusements, and find their happiness in "going up to the house of God in company." His description is, however, very lively:

"Then thy spruce citizen, washed artisan,

And smug apprentice, gulp their weekly air;
Thy coach of hackney, whiskey, one-horse chair,
And humblest gig, through sundry suburbs whirl,
To Hamstead, Brentford, Harrow, make repair,
Till the tired jade the wheel forgets to hurl,

Provoking envious gibe from each pedestrian churl." P. 42. And we doubt not that not merely the "tired jade," and the graver inhabitants, if such there be, of these invaded villages, but religion herself, will rejoice if his lordship, or his conciliating muse, will persuade these sabbatical vagrants to seek their pleasures a little nearer home.

The stanzas describing the bull-fight are among the best in the volume, but we have space only for one.

"Thrice sounds the clarion: lo! the signal falls,
The den expands, and expectation mute
Gapes round the silent circle's loaded walls.

Bounds with one lashing spring the mighty brute,

And, wildly staring, spurns with sounding foot
The sand, nor blindly rushes on the foe;

Here, there, he points his threatening front to suit
His first attack, wide waving to and fro

His angry tail: red rolls his eye's dilated glow." p. 45.

Our next extract shall be part of an ode, addressed to Inez, about this point of the tour, and which may assist as a foundation for some of our concluding observations.

"And doth thou ask, what secret wo

I bear, corroding joy and youth;

And wilt thou vainly seek to know

A pang, e'en thou must fail to sooth?
It is not love, it is not hate,

Nor low ambition's honours lost,
That bids me loathe my present state,
And fly from all I prized the most.
It is that weariness that springs

From all I meet, or hear, or see:
To me no pleasure beauty brings;

Thine eyes have scarce a charm for me.
It is that settled, ceaseless gloom

The fabled Hebrew wanderer bore;
That will not look beyond the tomb,

But cannot hope for rest before.
What exile from himself can flee?

To zones, though more and more remote,
Still, still pursues, where'er I be,

The blight of life, the demon thought.
Through many a clime 'tis mine to go,
With many a retrospection curst,

And all my solace is to know,

Whate'er betides, I've known the worst.

What is that worst?-nay, do not ask;

In pity from the search forbear:

Smile on, nor venture to unmask

Man's heart, and view the hell that's there."-p. 55.

The second canto brings us at once to Athens and the following fine lines.

"Ancient of days! august Athena! where

Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul?
Gone-glimmering through the dream of things that were.
First in the race that lead to glory's goal,

They were, and passed away--is this the whole?

A schoolboy's tale-the wonder of an hour.

The warriour's weapons and the sophist's stole

Are sought in vain, and o'er each mouldering tower,

Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power." p. 62.

The next stanza develops, we imagine, the grand source of all the gloom and bad passions displayed in the volume. Speaking still of Athens, he says,

"Even gods must yield-religions take their turn:
'Twas Jove's, 'tis Mahomet's-and other creeds,
Will rise with other years--till man shall learn,
Vainly his incense soars, his victim bleeds;

Poor child of doubt and death, whose hope is built on reeds.” Ib.

In other words, that all religion is gross delusion. If good poetry could apologize for bad divinity, the following soliloquy on a skull might apologize for the last extract.

"Look on its broken arch, its ruined wall,

Its chambers desolate, and portals foul:

Yes, this was once ambition's airy hall,

The dome of thought, the palace of the soul.
Behold through each lack-lustre, eyeless hole,
The gay recess of wisdom and of wit,

And passion's host, that never brooked control:
Can all, saint, sage, or sophist ever writ

People this lonely tower, this tenement refit?" p. 64.

Then, as a substitute for "feeble" orthodoxy, he recommends to us this, obviously in his own case efficacious, remedy for gloom: "Pursue what chance or fate proclaimeth best;

Peace waits us on the shores of Acheron."

The description of the convoy sailing is finely executed, but we pass it over to give the truly beautiful portrait of "Solitude," which follows:

"To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,

To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,

Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne'er, or rarely been;

To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,

With the wild flock, that never needs a fold;
Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean:
This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold

Converse with Nature's charms, and see her stores unroll'd.
"But midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men,

To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess,

To roam along, the world's tir'd denizen,

With none who bless us, none whom we can bless;
Minions of splendour, shrinking from distress!
None that with kindred consciousness endued,
If we were not, would seem to smile the less
Of all that flatter'd, follow'd, sought and sued:
This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!" p. 74.

In the 32d stanza, he goes out of his way to tell us, what a little modesty would have veiled, that he once

"Was not unskilful in the spoiler's art,

And spread its snare licentious far and wide."

Then comes an invocation to Sappho, as truly pagan as Sappho herself could desire."

"Dark Sappho, could not verse immortal save

That breast imbued with such immortal fire;

Could she not live, who life eternal gave,

If life eternal may await the lyre,

That only heaven to which earth's children may aspire?"

After some spirited delineation of Albanian scenery, we arrive at the following stimulating stanzas to the prostrate cities of ancient Greece.

"Fair Greece! sad relick of departed worth!

Immortal, though no more; though fallen, great!
Who now shall lead thy scattered children forth,
And long accustom❜d bondage uncreate?

Not such thy sons who whilome did await,
The hopeless warriour's of a willing doom,
In bleak Thermopyla's sepulchral strait-
Oh! who that gallant spirit shall resume,

Leap from Eurota's banks, and call thee from the tomb?" p. 101.

"Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not,

Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow?"

"When riseth Lacedemon's hardihood,

When Thebes Epaminondas rears again,

When Athens' children are with arts endued,

When Grecian mothers shall give birth to men,
Then mayest thou be restored; but not till then.

VOL. I.-No. I.

X