LORD BYRON. LORD BYRON and Sir Walter Scott are among writers now living the two, who would carry away a majority of suffrages as the greatest geniuses of the age. The former would, perhaps, obtain the preference with the fine gentlemen and ladies (squeamishness apart)—the latter with the critics and the vulgar. We shall treat of them in the same connection, partly on account of their distinguished preeminence, and partly because they afford a complete contrast to each other. In their poetry, in their prose, in their politics, and in their tempers, no two men can be more unlike. If Sir Walter Scott may be thought by some to have been "Born universal heir to all humanity," it is plain Lord Byron can set up no such pretension. He is, in a striking degree, the creature of his own will. He holds no communion with his kind; but stands alone, without mate or fellow "As if a man were author of himself, He is like a solitary peak, all access to which is cut off not more by elevation than distance. He is seated on a lofty eminence, "cloud-capt," or reflecting the last rays of setting suns; and in his poetical moods, reminds us of the fabled Titans, retired to a ridgy steep, playing on their Pan's-pipes, and taking up ordinary men and things in their hands with haughty indifference. He raises his subject to himself, or tramples on it; he neither stoops to, nor This Essay was written just before Lord Byron's death. loses himself in it. He exists not by sympathy, but by antipate He scorns all things, even himself. Nature must come to h= sit for her picture he does not go to her. She must consa time, his convenience, and his humour; and wear a sombre or fantastic garb, or his Lordship turns his back upon her Th is no ease, no unaffected simplicity of manner, no "golden mezz All is strained, or petulant in the extreme. His though are sphered and crystalline; his style "prouder than when be r bends;" his spirit fiery, impatient, wayward, indefatigabie Is stead of taking his impressions from without, in entire and amo unimpaired masses, he moulds them according to his own temper ament, and heats the materials of his imagination in the furnace of his passions-Lord Byron's verse glows like a flame, com suming every thing in its way; Sir Walter Scott's glides use i river, clear, gentle, harmless. The poetry of the first sce that of the last scarcely warms. The light of the one prema from an internal source, ensanguined, sullen, fixed; the other re flects the hues of Heaven, or the face of nature, glan-ing v and various. The productions of the Northern Bard have the rust and the freshness of antiquity about them; those of the Noèm Poet cease to startle from their extreme ambition of novelty, ba in style and matter. Sir Walter's rhymes are silly sooth "- “And dally with the innocence of thought, his Lordship's Muse spurns the olden time, and affects all the sun cilious airs of a modern fine lady and an upstart. The object of the one writer is to restore us to truth and nature. the other hefy thinks how he shall display his own power, or vent has spleen, or astonish the reader either by starting new subjects and tra.ns speculation, or by expressing old ones in a more striking and phatic manner than they have been expressed before. He cares little what it is he says, so that he can say it differently from others This may account for the charges of plagiarism which have been repeatedly brought against the Noble Poet-if he can borrow an image or sentiment from another, and heighten it by an epider w an allusion of greater force and beauty than is to be found in original passage, he thinks he shows his superiority of execution in this in a more marked manner than if the first suggestion had been his own. It is not the value of the observation itself he is solicitous about; but he wishes to shine by contrast-even nature only serves as a foil to set off his style. He therefore takes the thoughts of others (whether contemporaries or not) out of their mouths, and is content to make them his own, to set his stamp upon them, by imparting to them a more meretricious gloss, a higher relief, a greater loftiness of tone, and a characteristic inveteracy of purpose. Even in those collateral ornaments of modern style, slovenliness, abruptness, and eccentricity (as well as in terseness and significance,) Lord Byron, when he pleases, defies competition and surpasses all his contemporaries. Whatever he does, he must do in a more decided and daring manner than any one else he lounges with extravagance, and yawns so as to alarm the reader! Self-will, passion, the love of singularity, a disdain of himself and of others (with a conscious sense that this is among the ways and means of procuring admiration) are the proper categories of his mind: he is a lordly writer, is above his own reputation, and condescends to the Muses with a scornful grace! Lord Byron, who in his politics is a liberal, in his genius is haughty and aristocratic: Walter Scott, who is an aristocrat in principle, is popular in his writings, and is (as it were) equally servile to nature and to opinion. The genius of Sir Walter is essentially imitative, or "denotes a foregone conclusion:" that of Lord Byron is self-dependent; or at least requires no aid, is governed by no law, but the impulses of its own will. We con fess, however much we may admire independence of feeling and erectness of spirit in general or practical questions, yet in works of genius we prefer him who bows to the authority of nature, who appeals to actual objects, to mouldering superstitions, to history, observation, and tradition, before him who only consults the prag. matical and restless workings of his own breast, and gives them out as oracles to the world. We like a writer (whether poet or prose-writer) who takes in (or is willing to take in) the range of half the universe in feeling, character, description, much better than we do one who obstinately and invariably shuts himself up in the Bastile of his own ruling passions. In short, we had rather be Sir Walter Scott (meaning thereby the Author of Waver'ey) tha Lord Byron, a hundred times over. And for the reason just g ven namely, that he casts his descriptions in the mould of nature, evervarying, never tiresome, always interesting and always instructive, instead of casting them constantly in the mould of his own de vidual impressions. He gives us man as he is, or as he was almos: every variety of situation, action, and feeling. Lor! Bra makes man after his own image, woman after his own heart the one is a capricious tyrant, the other a yielding slave, he gives us the misanthrope and the voluptuary by turns; and with these two characters, burning or melting in their own fires, he makes out everlasting centos of himself. He hangs the cloud, the fẩm et 21 existence over all outward things-sits in the centre of ha thoughts, and enjoys dark night, bright day, the glitter and gloom "in cell monastic "—we see the mournful pail, the cra-21, the death's heads, the faded chaplet of flowers, the gleaming tare”, the agonized brow of genius, the wasted form of beauty—♪. are still imprisoned in a dungeon, a curtain intercepts ear we do not breathe freely the air of nature or of our own thoughthe other admired author draws aside the curtain, and the ve egotism is rent, and he shows us the crowd of living men women, the endless groups, the landscape back-ground, the ed and the rainbow, and enriches our imaginations and relieves ne passion by another, and expands and lightens reflection, and tak away that tightness at the breast which arises from thinking wishing to think that there is nothing in the world out of a self-In this point of view, the Author of Waverley 9 one greatest teachers of morality that ever lived, by emancipat ng mind from petty, narrow, and bigoted prejudices Lard Banan the greatest pamperer of those prejudices, by seem rg to think there is nothing else worth encouraging but the seeds or the full luxuriant growth of dogmatism and self-concert. In reading the Scotch Novels, we never think about the author, except from a feeling of curiosity respecting our unknown benefactor in rea Lord Byron's works, he himself is never absent from our The colouring of Lord Byron's style, however nch and dipped Tyrian dyes, is nevertheless opaque, is in itself an obiect of de and wonder: Sir Walter Scott's is perfectly transparent. In study ing the one, you seem to gaze at the figures cut in stained glass, which exclude the view beyond, and where the pure light of Heaven is only a means of setting off the gorgeousness of art: in reading the other, you look through a noble window at the clear and varied landscape without. Or to sum up the distinction in one word, Sir Walter Scott is the most dramatic writer now living; and Lord Byron is the least so. It would be difficult to imagine that the Author of Waverley is in the smallest degree a pedant; as it would be hard to persuade ourselves that the author of Childe Harold and Don Juan is not a coxcomb, though a provoking and sublime one. In this decided preference given to Sir Walter Scott over Lord Byron, we distinctly include the proseworks of the former; for we do not think his poetry alone by any means entitles him to that precedence. Sir Walter in his poetry, though pleasing and natural, is a comparative trifler: it is in his anonymous productions that he has shown himself for what he is!— Intensity is the great and prominent distinction of Lord Byron's writings. He seldom gets beyond force of style, nor has he produced any regular work or masterly whole. He does not prepare any plan beforehand, nor revise and retouch what he has written with polished accuracy. His only object seems to be to stimulate himself and his readers for the moment-to keep both alive, to drive away ennui, to substitute a feverish and irritable state of excitement for listless indolence or even calm enjoyment. For this purpose he pitches on any subject at random without much thought or delicacy-he is only impatient to begin—and takes care to adorn and enrich it as he proceeds with "thoughts that breathe and words that burn." He composes (as he himself has said) whether he is in the bath, in his study, or on horseback-he writes as habitually as others talk or think—and whether we have the inspiration of the Muse or not, we always find, the spirit of the man of genius breathing from his verse. He grapples with his subject, and moves, penetrates, and animates it by the electric force of his own feelings. He is often monotonous, extravagant, offensive; but he is never dull, or tedious, but when he writes prose. Lord Byron does not exhibit a new view of nature, or raise insignificant objects into importance by the romantic associations with which he surrounds them; but generally (at least) takes common |