by Southey's "double-distilled" cant, in ing his soul to his reader. To use Scott's that poem of his on the death of George beautiful figure, "the stanzas fall off as III.-which, reversing the usual case, easily as the leaves from the autumnal now lives suspended by a tow-line from tree." You stand under a shower of wiits caricature. All other hatred-that thered gold. And, in spite of the endless of Johnson-that of Burke-that of touches of wit, the general impression is Juvenal-that of all, save Junius-is most melancholy; and not Rasselas, nor tame and maudlin compared to the wrath Timon, casts so deep a shadow on the of Byron expressed in this poem. Scorn thoughtful reader as the "very tragical often has the effect of cooling and carrying mirth" of Don Juan. off rage-but here "the ground burns frore, and cold performs the effect of fire." His very contempt is molten; his tears of laughter, as well as of misery, fall in burning showers. In what single lines has he concentrated the mingled essence of the coolest contempt, and the hottest indignation! "A better farmer ne'er brush'd dew from lawn. There spoke the authentic shade of Junius, or at least a spirit worthy of contending with him for the honour of being the "Best Hater" upon record. In settling, lastly, his rank as a poet, we may simply say, that he must be placed, on the whole, beneath and apart from the first class of poets, such as Homer, Dante, Milton, Shakspere, and Goethe. Often, indeed, he seems to rush into their company, and to stand among them, like a daring boy amid his seniors, measuring himself proudly with their superior stature. And, possibly, had he lived, he might have ultimately taken his place amongst them, for it was in his power to have done this. But life was denied him. The wild steed of his passions-like his own "Mazeppa"-carried him furiously into the wilderness, and dashed him down into premature death. And he now must take his place as one at the very head of the second rank of poets, and arrested when he was towering up toward the first. And yet, mixed with the strokes of We remember a pilgrimage we made ribaldry, are touches of a grandeur which some years ago to Lochnagar. As we he has rarely elsewhere aproached. His ascended, a mist came down over the poetry always rises above itself, when hill, like a veil dropped by some jealous painting the faded splendour wan-the beauty over her own fair face. At length steadfast gloom-the hapless magnani- the summit was reached, though the promity of the prince of darkness. With perfect ease he seems to enter into the soul, and fill up the measure and stature of the awful personage. spect was denied us. It was a proud and thrilling moment. What though darkness was all around? It was the very atmosphere that suited the scene. It It were unpardonable, even in a rapid was "dark Lochnagar." And only think review, to omit all notice of "Don Juan," how fine it was to climb up its cairnwhich, if it bring our notion of the man to lift a stone from it, to be in after-time to its lowest point, exalts our idea of the a memorial of our journey, to sing the song poet. Its great charm is its conversa- which made it glorious and dear, in its tional ease. How coolly and calmly he own proud drawing-room, with those great bestrides his Pegasus even when he is at fog-curtains floating around-to pass the gallop. With what exquisitely quiet along the brink of its precipices-to and quick transitions does he pass from snatch a fearful joy, as we leant over, and humour to pathos, and make you laugh hung down, and saw from beneath the and cry at once, as you do in dreams. It gleam of eternal snow shining up from its is less a man writing, than a man resign- | hollows, and columns, or rather perpen dicular seas of mist, streaming up upon the leads many to hang over, and some to leap wind "Like foam from the roused ocean of deep hell, Where every wave breaks on a living shore, Heap'd with the damn'd like pebbles" down, his precipices. Volcanic as he is, tinged, too, here and there, on their tops by gleams of sunshine, the farewell beams of the dying day. It was the highest moment we ever experienced. We had stood upon many hills-in sunshine and in shade, in mist and in thunder-but never had before, nor hope to have again, such a feeling of the grandeur of this lower universe such a sense of horrible sublimity. Nay, we question if there be a mountain in the empire, which, though seen in similar circumstances, could awaken the same emotions in our minds. It is No poet, since Homer and Ida, has not its loftiness, though that be great thus everlastingly shot his genius into nor its bold outline, nor its savage lone- the heart of one great mountain, identiliness, nor its mist-loving precipices, but fying himself and his song with it. Not the associations which crown its crags Horace with Soracte-not Wordsworth with a "peculiar diadem❞—its identifica- with Helvellyn not Coleridge with tion with the image of a poet, who, amid Mont Blanc not Wilson with the all his fearful errors, had, perhaps more Black Mount-not even Scott with the than any of the age's bards, the power of Eildons all these are still common investing all his career-yea, to every property, but Lochnagar is Byron's own corner which his fierce foot ever touched, -no poet will ever venture to sing it or which his genius ever sung-with pro- again. In its dread circle none durst found and melancholy interest. We saw walk but he. His allusions to it are not the name Byron written in the cloud- numerous, but its peaks stood often becharacters above us. We saw his genius fore his eye: a recollection of its gransadly smiling in those gleams of stray deur served more to colour his line than sunshine which gilded the darkness they the glaciers of the Alps, the cliffs of could not dispel. We found an emblem Jura, or the "thunder hills of fear," of his passions in that flying rack, and of which he heard in Chimari; even from his character in those lowering precipices. the mountains of Greece he was carried We seemed to hear the wail of his restless back to Morven, and "Lochnagar, with spirit in the wild sob of the wind, fainting Ida, looked o'er Troy." Hence the and struggling up under its burden of severe, Dante-like, monumental, moundarkness. Nay, we could fancy that this tainous cast of his better poetry; for we hill was designed as an eternal monument firmly believe that the scenery of one's to his name, and to image all those pecu- youth gives a permanent bias and colourliarities which make that name for ever il- ing to the genius, the taste, and the lustrious. Not the loftiest of his country's style-i. e., if there be an intellect to poets, he is the most sharply and terribly receive an impulse, or a taste to catch a defined. In magnitude and round com- tone. Many, it is true, bred in cities, or pleteness, he yields to many; in jagged, amid common scenery, make up for the abrupt, and passionate projection of his lack by early travel; so did Milton, Coleown shadow over the world of literature, ridge, and Wilson. But who may not to none. The Genius of convulsion, a gather, from the tame tone of Cowper's dire attraction, dwells around him, which landscapes, that he had never enjoyed such opportunities? And who, in Pol- not Coila colour the genial soul of its lok's powerful but gloomy poem, may poet? Has not the scenery of his "own not detect the raven hue which a sterile romantic town" made much of the prose moorland scenery had left upon his mind? and poetry of Sir Walter Scott what it Have not, again, the glad landscape of is? So, is it mere fancy which traces the the Howe of the Mearns, and the pro- stream of Byron's poetry, in its light and spect from the surmounting Hill of Gar- its darkness, its bitterness and its brilvock, left a pleasing trace upon the liance, to this smitten rock in the wildermild pages of Beattie's "Minstrel ?" Did |ness-to the cliffs of Lochnagar? GEORGE CRABBE. To be the poet of the waste places of cumstances, besides, there had stolen Creation to adopt the orphans of the over his soul a shade of settled though mighty mother-to wed her dowerless subdued gloom. And for sympathy with daughters-to find out the beauty which this, he betook himself to the sterner has been spilt in tiny drops in her more and sadder aspects of nature, where he unlovely regions-to echo the low music saw, or seemed to see, his own feelings which arises from even her stillest and reflected, as in a sea of melancholy faces, most sterile spots-was the mission of in dull skies, waste moorlands, the low Crabbe, as a descriptive poet. He pre- beach, and the waves moaning upon it, ferred the Leahs to the Rachels of as if weary of their eternal wanderings. nature and this he did not merely Such, too, at moments, was the feeling that his lot had cast him amid such of Burns, when he strode on the scaur scenes, and that early associations had of the Nith, and saw the waters red and taught him a profound interest in them, turbid below; or walked in a windy day but apparently from native taste. He by the side of a plantation, and heard the actually loved that beauty which stands "sound of a going" upon the tops of the shivering on the brink of barrenness-trees; or when he exclaimed, with a calm loved it for its timidity and its loneliness. simplicity of bitterness which is most afNay, he seemed to love barrenness itself; fectingbrooding over its dull page till there arose from it a strange lustre, which his eye distinctly sees, and which in part he makes visible to his readers. Oh! where, indeed, can the unhappy It was even as the darkness of cells repair, to escape from their own sorrows, has been sometimes peopled to the view or worse, from the unthinking glee or conof the solitary prisoner, and spiders stitutional cheerfulness of others, more seemed friends in the depths of his fitly than into the wastes and naked dungeon. We can fancy, in Crabbe's places of nature? She will not then mind, a feeling of pity for those unloved and there seem to insult them with spots, and those neglected glories. We her laughing luxuriance her foliage can fancy him saying, "Let the gay and fluttering, as if in vain display, with the aspiring mate with nature in her the glossy gilding of her flowers, or the towering altitudes, and flatter her more sunny sparkle and song of her streamfavoured scenes; I will go after her into lets. But she will uplift a mightier her secret retirements, bring out her and older voice. She will soothe them bashful beauties, praise what none are by a sterner ministry. She will teach willing to praise, and love what there them "old truths, abysmal truths, awful are few to love." From his early cir- truths." She will answer their sighs by The leafless trees my fancy please: the groans of the creation travelling in ing only upon objects already interesting pain; suck up their tears in the sweat or ennobled, upon battle-fields, castellated of her great agonies; reflect their tiny ruins, Italian palaces, or Alpine peaks. wrinkles in those deep stabs and scars This, at least, is true of his "Childe on her forehead, which speak of struggle Harold," and his earlier pieces. In the and contest; give back the gloom of later productions of his pen, he goes to their brows in the frowns of her forests, the opposite extreme, and alights, with a her mountain solitudes, and her waste daring yet dainty foot, upon all shunned midnight darkness; infuse something, and forbidden things-reminds us of the too, of her own sublime expectancy into raven in the Deluge, which found rest their spirits; and dismiss them from her for the sole of her foot upon carcasses, society, it may be sadder, but certainly where the dove durst not stand-rushes calmer and wiser men. How admirably in where modesty and reserve alike have is nature suited to all moods of all men! forbidden entrance—and ventures, though In spring, she is gay with the light- still not like a lost archangel, to tread the hearted; in summer, gorgeous as its sun burning marl of hell, the dim gulf of to those fiery spirits who seem made for Hades, the shadowy ruins of the prea warmer day; in autumn, she spreads Adamitic world, and the crystal paveover most hearts a mellow and unearth-ment of heaven. Moore practises a ly joy; and even in winter-when her principle of more delicate selection, retemple is deserted of the frivolous and sembling some nice fly which should the timid, who quit it along with the alight only upon flowers, whether nasmile of the sun-she attracts her own tural or artificial, if so that flowers they few but faithful votaries, who love her in seemed to be; thus, from sunny bowers, her naked sculpture, as well as in her and moonlit roses, and gardens, and glowing pictorial hues, and who enjoy blushing skies, and ladies' dresses, does her solemn communion none the less the Bard of Erin extract his finest that they enjoy it by themselves. To poetry. Shelley and Coleridge attach use the words of a forgotten poet,* ad- themselves almost exclusively to the dressing spring great-understanding this term in a wide sense, as including much that is grotesque, and much that is homely, which the magic of their genius sublimates to a proper pitch of keeping with the rest. Their usual walk is swelling and buskined: their common talk is of great rivers, great forests, great seas, great continents; or else of comets, suns, constellations, and firmaments-as that of all half-mad, wholly miserable, and opium-fed genius is apt to be. Sir Walter Scott, who seldom grappled with the gloomier and grander features of his country's scenery (did he ever describe Glencoe or Foyers, or the wildernesses around Ben Macdhui?), had (need we say?) the most exquisite eye for all picturesque and romantic aspects in sea, shore, or sky; and in the quick perception of this element of the picturesque lay his principal, if not only, descriptive Crabbe, as a descriptive poet, differs from other modern masters of the art, alike in his selection of subjects, and in his mode of treating the subjects he does select. Byron moves over nature with a fastidious and aristocratic step-touch* Poor John Wright, author of "The Retro- power. Wordsworth, again, seems always spect," and other poems. to be standing above, though not stoop ce ing over, the objects he describes. He on end under the restlessness of the inseldom looks up in rapt admiration of sane; its music of groans, and shrieks, what is above him; the bending furze- and mutterings of still more melancholy bush and the lowly broom-the nest meaning; its keepers cold and stern, as lying in the level clover-field-the tarn the snow-covered cliffs above the wintry sinking away seemingly before his eye cataract; its songs dying away in despairinto darker depths-the prospect from ing gurgles down the miserable throat; the mountain summit cast far beneath its cells how devoid of monastic silence; him; at highest, the star burning low its "confusion worse confounded," of gibupon the mountain's ridge, like an un-bering idiocy, monomania absorbed and tended watchfire:" these are the objects absent from itself as well as from the which he loves to describe, and these world, and howling frenzy; its daylight may stand as emblems of his lowly yet saddened as it shines into the dim, vaaspiring genius. Crabbe, on the other cant, or glaring eyes of those wretched hand, goes down on his knees, that he men: and its moonbeams shedding a may more accurately describe such ob- more congenial ray upon the solitude; jects as the marsh given over to desola- or the sick-bed, or the death-bed of detion from immemorial time-the slush rangement-such familiar faces of want, left by the sea, and revealing the dead guilt, and wo-of nakedness, sterility, body of the suicide-the bare crag and and shame, does Crabbe delight in showthe stunted tree, diversifying the scenery ing us; and is, in very truth, "nature's of the saline wilderness-the house on sternest painter, yet the best." In his the heath, creaking in the storm, and mode of managing his descriptions, Crabbe telling strange stories of misery and is equally peculiar. Objects, in themcrime-the pine in some wintry wood, selves counted commonplace or disgustwhich had acted as the gallows of some ing, frequently become impressive, and miserable man-the gorse surrounding even sublime, when surrounded by interwith yellow light the encampment of esting circumstances-when shown in the the gipsies-the few timid flowers, or moonlight of memory-when linked to "weeds of glorious feature," which adorn strong passion-or when touched by the the brink of ocean-the snow putting ray of imagination. But it is the pecuout the fire of the pauper, or lying un- liarity and the daring of this poet, that melted on his pillow of death-the web he often, not always, tries us with truth, of the spider blinding the cottager's win- and nothing but truth, as if to bring the dow-the wheel turned by the meagre question to an issue-whether, in nature, hand of contented or cursing penury- absolute truth be not essential though the cards trembling in the grasp of the severe poetry. On this question, cerdesperate debauchee-the day stocking tainly, issue was never so fully joined forming the cap by night, and the garter before. In even Wordsworth's eye there at midnight-the dunghill becoming the is a misty glimmer of imagination, through accidental grave of the drunkard-the which all objects, low as well as high, are poorhouse of forty years ago, with its seen. Even his "five blue eggs" gleam patched windows, its dirty environs, its upon him through a light which comes moist and miserable walls, its inmates not from themselves-which comes, it all snuff, and selfishness, and sin-the re- may be, from the Great Bear, or Arcceptacle of the outlawed members of Eng-turus and his sons. And when he does lish society (how different from "Poosie -as in some of his feebler verses-strive Nancy's!"), with its gin-gendered quar- to see out of this medium, he drops his rels, its appalling blasphemies, its deep mantle, loses his vision, and describes debauches, its ferocity without fun, its little better than would his own "Old huddled murders, and its shrieks of disease dumb in the uproar around-the Bedlam of forty years ago, with its straw Cumberland Beggar." Shakspere in his witches' caldron, and Burns in "haly table, are shockingly circumstantial; but |