That heavy chill has frozen o'er the fountain of our tears, And though the eye may sparkle still, 'tis where the ice appears. (1) These verses were given by Lord Byron to Mr. Power, of the Strand, who has published them, with very beautiful music by Sir John Stevenson. "I feel merry enough to send you a sad song. An event, the death of poor Dorset (see antè, p. 9), and the recollection of what I once felt, and ought to have felt now, but could not-set me pondering, and finally into the train of thought which you have in your hands. I wrote them with a view to your setting them, and as a present to Power, if he would accept the words, and you did not think yourself degraded, for once in a way, by marrying them to music. I don't care what Power says to secure the property of the song, so that it is not complimentary to me, nor any thing about condescending' or 'noble author'-both vile phrases,' as Polonius says."— Lord B. to Mr. Moore.-L. E. (2) "Do you remember the lines I sent you early last year? I don't wish (like Mr. Fitzgerald) to claim the character of vates,' in all its translations, but were they not a little prophetic? I mean those beginning, 'There's not a joy the world can give,' etc., on which I pique myself as being the truest, though the most melancholy, I ever wrote." Letters, March, 1816.-L. E. B. (3) "I can forgive the rogue for utterly falsifying every line of mine Ode- which I take to be the last and uttermost stretch of human magnanimity. Do you remember the story ODE FROM THE FRENCH. We do not curse thee, Waterloo! of a certain abbé, who wrote a treatise on the Swedish constitution, and proved it indissoluble and eternal! Just as 'Sir,' he had corrected the last sheet, news came that Gustavus the Third had destroyed this immortal government. quoth the abbé, the King of Sweden may overthrow the constitution, but not my book!!' I think of the abbé, but not with him. Making every allowance for talent and most consummate daring, there is, after all, a good deal in luck or destiny. He might have been stopped by our frigates, or wrecked in the Gulf of Lyons, which is particularly tempestuous-or-a thousand things. But he is certainly Fortune's favourite." B. Letters, March, 1815.-L. E. (4) See Rev. chap. viii. v. 7, etc. "The first angel sounded, and there followed bail and fire mingled with blood," etc. v. 8. "And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea; and the third part of the sea became blood," etc. v. 10. "And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp; and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters." v. II. "And the name of the star is called Wormwood and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter." The Chief has fallen, but not by you, Vanquishers of Waterloo! When the soldier citizen Sway'd not o'er his fellow-men- Where Glory smiled on Freedom's son- With that youthful chief competed? The Hero sunk into the King? Then he fell:- And thou, too, of the snow-white plume!(1) Such as he of Naples wears, On thy war-horse through the ranks Once as the moon sways o'er the tide, Of the eagle's burning crest- There be sure was Murat charging! O'er glories gone the invaders march, With her heart in her voice; (1) "Poor dear Murat, what an end! His white plume used to be a rallying-point in battle, like Henry the Fourth's. He refused a confessor and a bandage; so would neither suffer his soul nor body to be bandaged." B. Letters.L. E. (2) Murat's remains are said to have been torn from the grave and burnt. (3) "Talking of politics, as Caleb Quotem says, pray look at the conclusion of my Ode on Waterloo,' written in the year 1815, and, comparing it with the Duke de Berri's catastrophe in 1820, tell me if I have not as good a right to the character of Vates,' in both senses of the word, as Fitzgerald and Coleridge?- France hath twice too well been taught But in equal rights and laws, With their breath, and from their birth, Scattering nations' wealth like sand; But the heart and the mind, And who shall resist that proud union? FROM THE FRENCH. MUST thou go, my glorious Chief,(4) Sever'd from thy faithful few? Who can tell thy warrior's grief, Maddening o'er that long adieu? Woman's love, and friendship's zeal, Dear as both have been to meWhat are they to all I feel, With a soldier's faith for thee? Idol of the soldier's soul! First in fight, but mightiest now: Thee alone no doom can bow. Scarce dare trust a man with thee, 'Crimson tears will follow yet;' (4) "All wept, but particularly Savary, and a Polish of ficer who had been exalted from the ranks by Bonaparte. He clung to his master's knees; wrote a letter to Lord Keith, entreating permission to accompany him, even in the most menial capacity, which could not be admitted." (5) "At Waterloo, one man was seen, whose left arm was shattered by a cannon-ball, to wrench it off with the other, and throwing it up in the air, exclaimed to his com rades, Vive l'Empereur, jusqu'à la mort!' There were many other instances of the like: this you may, however depend on as true."-Private Letter from Brussels. Would the sycophants of him In his native darkness share? Hearts like those which still are thine? My chief, my king, my friend, adieu! Never did I droop before; Never to my sovereign sue, As his foes I now implore: All I ask is to divide Every peril he must brave; Sharing by the hero's side His fall, his exile, and his grave. ON THE STAR OF "THE LEGION OF HONOUR." [FROM THE FRENCH.] STAR of the brave!-whose beam hath shed Souls of slain heroes form'd thy rays; Like lava roll'd thy stream of blood, One tint was of the sunbeam's dyes; Star of the brave! thy ray is pale, And Freedom hallows with her tread (1) The tricolour. (2) This motto was not prefixed to these lines until several editions had been printed. Mr. Coleridge's poem was, in fact, published in June, 1816, and reached Lord Byron after he had 1 For beautiful in death are they Who proudly fall in her array; And soon, oh goddess! may we be For evermore with them or thee! NAPOLEON'S FAREWELL. [FROM THE FRENCH.] FAREWELL to the land where the gloom of my glory I have coped with the nations which dread me thus Farewell to thee, France! when thy diadem crown'd me, blasted, Had still soar'd with eyes fix'd on victory's sun! Farewell to thee, France!-but when Liberty rallies Then turn thee and call on the Chief of thy choice! But never either found another To free the hollow heart from paining- But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder Shall wholly do away, I ween, The marks of that which once hath been." Coleridge's Christabel. (2) FARE thee well! and if for ever, Still for ever, fare thee well: Would that breast were bared before thee Which thou ne'er canst know again : crossed the Alps, in September. It was then that he signified his wish to have the extract in question affixed to all future copies of his stanzas; and the reader, who might have doubted Mr. Moore's assertion in his Life, that Lord Byron's Would that breast, by thee glanced over, Every inmost thought could show! Then thou wouldst at last discover "I was not well to spurn it so. Though the world for this commend thee- Though my many faults defaced me, Could no other arm be found, Yet, oh yet, thyself deceive not; Love may sink by slow decay, But by sudden wrench, believe not Hearts can thus be torn away: Still thine own its life retaineth-- Still must mine, though bleeding, beat; And the undying thought which paineth Is-that we no more may meet. These are words of deeper sorrow hopes of an ultimate reconciliation with his Lady survived even the unsuccessful negotiation prompted by the kind interference of Madame de Stael, when he visited her at Copet, will probably now consider the selection and date of this motto, as circumstances strongly corroborative of the biographer's statement: "A dreary sea now flows between But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder The marks of that which once hath been!" The saddest period of Lord Byron's life was also, we see, one of the busiest. His refuge and solace were ever in the practice of his art; and the rapidity with which he continued to pour out verses at this melancholy time, if it tended to prolong some of his personal annoyances, by giving : malevolent critics fresh pretences for making his private affairs the subject of public discussion, has certainly been in no respect injurious to his poetical reputation. in reviewing some of the performances published about this time, that Sir Walter Scott threw out the following observations, not the less interesting and instructive for certain modest allusions to that great author's own experiences as a popular poet: — It was "We are sometimes," he says. tempted to blame the timidity of those poets, who, possessing powers to arrest the admiration of the public, are yet too mach afraid of censure to come frequently for ward, and thus defraud themselves of their fame, and the public of the delight which they might afford us. Where success has been unexpectedly, and perhaps undeservedly, obtained by the capricious vote of fashion, it may be well for the adventurer to draw his stake and leave the game, as every succeeding hazard will diminish the chance of his rising a winner. But they cater ill for the public, and give indifferent advice to the poet,-supposing him possessed of the highest qualities of his art,-who do not advise him to labour, while the laurel around his brows yet retains its freshness. Sketches from Lord Byron are more valuable than finished pictures from others; nor are we at all sure, that any labour which he might bestow in revisal would not rather efface than refine those outlines of striking and powerful originality which they exhibit, when flung rough from the band of the master. No one would have wished to condemn Michael Angelo to work upon a single block of marble, until he had satisfied, in every point, the petty criticism of that Pope, who, neglecting the sublime and magnificent character and attitude of his Moses, descended to blame a wrinkle in the fold of the gar inent. "Should it be urged that, in thus stimulating genius to unsparing exertion, we encourage carelessness and hurry in the youthful candidates for literary distinction, we answer, it is not the learner to whom our remarks apply; they refer to him only, who, gifted by nature with the higher power of poetry,-an art as difficult as it is enchanting,-has made himself master, by application and study, of the mechanical process, and in witom, we believe, frequent exer And when thou wouldst solace gather, When our child's first accents flow, Wilt thou teach her to say "Father!" Though his care she must forego? When her little hands shall press thee, When her lip to thine is press'd, Think of him whose prayer shall bless thee, Think of him thy love had bless'd! Should her lineaments resemble Those thou never more mayst see, All my faults perchance thou knowest, Every feeling hath been shaken; Even my soul forsakes me now: tions upon new works awaken and stimulate that genius, which might be cramped and rendered tame, by long and minute attention to finish to the highest possible degree any one of the number. If we look at our poetical library we shall find, generally speaking, the most distinguished poets have been the most voluminous, and that those who, like Gray, limited their productions to a few pornus, anxiously and sedulously corrected and revised, have given them a stiff and artificial character, which, far from disarming criticism, has rather embittered its violence, while the Aristarch, like Aciniles assailing Blector, meditates dealing the mortal wound through some unguarded crevice of the supposed impenetrable armour, with which the cautious bard has vainly invested himself. "Our opinion must be necessarily qualified by the caution, that as no human invention can be infinitely fertile, as even the richest genius may be, in agricultural phrase, cropped out, and rendered sterile, and as each author must necessarily have a particular style in which he is supposed to excel, and must therefore be more or less a mannerist; no one can with prudence persevere in forcing himself before the public when, from failure in invention, or from having rendered the peculiarities of las style over trite and familiar, the veteran lags superfluous on the stage,' a slighted mute in those dramas where he was once the principal personage. To this banifiation vanity frequently exposes genius; and it is no doubt true that a copious power of diction, joined to habitual carelessness in composition, has frequently conduced to it. We would therefore be understood to recommend to anthers, while a consciousness of the possession of vigorous powers, carefully cultivated, unites with the favour of the public, to descend into the arena, and continue their efforts vigorously while their hopes are high, their spirits active, and the public propitious, in order that, on the slightest failure of nerves or breath, they may be able to withdraw themselves honourably from the contest, gracefully giving way to other candidates for fame, and cultivating studies more suitable to a flagging imagination than the fervid art of poetry. This, however, is the affair of the authors themselves: should they neglect this pradential course, the public will, no doubt, have more indifferent books on their table than would otherwise have leaded it; and as the world always seizes the first opportunity of recalling the ap plause it has bestowed, the former wreaths of the writers will for a time be blighted by their immediate failure. But these evils, so far as the public is concerned, are greatly overbalanced by such as arise from the timid caution which hids genius suppress its efforts until they shall be refined into unattainable perfection: and we cannot but repeat our conviction that poetry, being, in its higher classes, an art which has for its elements sublimity and unaffected beauty, more liable than any other to suffer from the labour of polishing, or from the elaborate and composite style of ornament, and alternate affectation of simplicity and artifice, which characterise the works, even of the first poets, when they have been over-ations to secure public applause, by long and reiterated correction. It must be remembered that we speak of the higher tones of composition, there are others of a subordinate character, where extreme art and labostr are not bestowed in vain. But we cannot consider over-aniGHIS correction as likely to be employed with advantage upon porms like those of Lord Byron, which have for their object to rouse the imagination, and awaken the passions." * 1 Fare thee well!-thus disunited, Torn from every nearer tie, Sear'd in heart, and lone, and blighted, More than this I scarce can die. March 17, 1816.(1) A SKETCH. (2) "Honest-honest lago! If that thou be'st a devil, I cannot kill thee."-Shakspeare. She taught the child to read, and taught so well, (1) Of this and the five following pieces, the first four were written immediately before Lord Byron's final departure from England; the others, during the earlier part of his residence in the neighbourhood of Geneva. They all refer to the unhappy event, which will for ever mark the chief crisis of his personal story,- that separation from Lady Byron, of which, after all that has been said and written, the real inotives and circumstances remain as obscure as ever. It is only, of course, with Lord Byron's part in the transaction that the public have any sort of title to concern themselves. He has given us this right, by making a domestic occurrence the subject of printed verses; but, so long as the other party chooses to guard that reserve, which few can be so uncharitable as not to ascribe, in the main, to a high feeling, it is entirely impossible to arrive at any clear and definite judg ment on the case as a whole. Each reader must, therefore, be content to interpret for himself, as fairly as he may, an already bulky collection of evidence, which will probably be doubled before it has any claim to be considered as com plete. There are, however, two important points which seem to us to be placed beyond all chance of dispute hereafter: namely, first, that Lord Byron himself never knew the precise origin of his Lady's resolution to quit his society, in 1816; and, secondly, that, down to the last, he never despaired of being ultimately reconciled to her. Both of these facts appear to be established, in the clearest manner, by Mr. Moore's Life, and the whole subsequent tenour of the Poet's own diaries, letters, and conversations. Kennedy, in his account of Lord Byron's last residence in Cepaalonia, represents him as saying,-"Lady Byron deserves every respect from me: I do not indeed know the cause of the separation, and I have remained, and ever will remain, ready for a reconciliation, whenever circumstances open and point out the way to it." Mr. Moore has preserved evidence of one attempt which Lord Byron made to bring about an explanation with his Lady, ere he left Switzerland for Italy. Whether he ever repeated the experi ment we are uncertain: but that failed,-and the failure must be borne in mind, when the reader considers some of the smaller pieces which follows. Mr. Moore says, "It was about the middle of April that his two ce ebrated copies of verses, "Fare thee well," and "A Sketch," made their appearance in the newspapers; and while the Intter poem was generally, and, it must be owned, justly condemned, as a sort of literary assault on an obscure female, whose situation ought to have placed her as much beneath his satire, as the undignified mode of his attack certainly raised her above it, with regard to the other poem, Mr. And panted for the truth it could not hear, opinions were a good deal more divided. To many it appeared a strain of true conjugal tenderness, a kind of appeal which no woman with a heart could resist; while, by others, on the contrary, it was considered to be a mere showy effusion of sentiment, as difficult for real feeling to have produced as it was easy for fancy and art, and altogether unworthy of the deep interests involved in the subject To this latter opinion I confess my own to have been, at first, strongly inclined; and suspicious as I could not help thinking the sentiment that could, at such a moment, indulge in such verses, the taste that prompted or sanctioned their publication appeared to me even still more questionable. On reading, however, his own account of all the circumstances in the Memoranda, I found that on both points I had, in common with a large portion of the public, done him înjustice. He there described, and in a manner whose sincerity there was no doubting, the swell of tender recollections under the influence of which. as he sat one night musing in his study, these stanzas were produced,the tears, as he said, falling fast over the paper as he wrote them." Neither did it appear. from that account, to have been from any wish or intention of his own, but through the injudicious zeal of a friend whom he had suffered to take a copy, that the verses met the public eye."-L. E. "Moore, in his Life, dwells at some length on the fact that the annals of men of genius present but too many instances of their unfitness for domestic ties, and too often afford occasion to draw a lamentable contrast between their professed sentiments and actual conduct. "Alfieri," says he, "though he could write a sonnet full of tenderness to his mother, never saw her but once after their early separation, though he frequently passed within a few miles of her residence. The poet Young, with all his pa rade of domestic sorrows, was, it appears, a neglectful husband, a harsh father; and Sterne, to use the words employed by Lord Byron, preferred whining over a dead ass to relieving a living mother.'" With the cases here quoted the world, in general, has classed that of Lord Byron, though "time, which makes man just to his fellows," has already begun to reverse a judgment, formed, as far as regards the poet's domestic conduct, in total, and indeed avowed, ignorance of facts.-P. E. (2) "1 send you my last night's dream, and request to have fifty copies struck off, for private distribution. I wish Mr. Gifford to look at them. They are from life. Lord B. to Mr. M. March 30, 1816. -L. E. |