C A T O 
 
 TO 
 
 LORD BY R O N 
 
 ON THE 
 
 jmmoralits 
 
 HIS WRITINGS. 
 
 ft S How poor ! how rich ! how abject I how august ! 
 
 * \ VAII 
 
 LONDON: 
 PRINTED FOR W. WETTON, Si, FLEET STREET. 
 
 1824. 
 
"I 
 
 LONDON t 
 PRINTED BY S. AKD K. BENTLEY, DORSET STREET. 
 
 490S31 
 
 ] 
 
CATO 
 
 TO 
 
 LORD BYR ON. 
 
 My Lord, 
 It will probably occasion you no surprise that 
 a poet who disregards decency should subject 
 himself to animadversion. In .assuming the li- 
 berty of this address, I claim but a common and 
 conceded privilege. " An author's works (as 
 you have yourself remarked*) are public pro. 
 perty. He who purchases may judge, and pub- 
 lish his opinion if he pleases." Generally speak- 
 ing, indeed, we content ourselves with a silent 
 judgment; but when the moral sense of mankind 
 is attempted to be perverted, and their religious 
 opinions and feelings are held up to contempt, a 
 mere silent judgment can no longer be rested in. 
 Our duty then runs in a higher form, and, where 
 offence is crying, reprehension becomes virtuous. 
 That you have afforded but too just a field for 
 severe discussion, even your warmest admirers 
 
 * Preface to Childe Harold. 
 A2 
 
4 
 
 raU st admit. For my own part, I have not J 
 confess, been a regnlar peruser of your works 
 I have neither thought well enough of them, nor 
 of your motives, so far as they cou d be dis- 
 covered, in giving them to the public, to be 
 very solicitous about the expected seasons of 
 2iv appearance. You have probably wrrfgn 
 m0 re than it has fallen to my lot to meet w^u 
 But I have read enough to convince me that had 
 I seen and known less of them, I should have 
 sustained no loss. 
 
 It is not my intention minutely to — 
 grounds upon which the poetry of Lord Byron 
 c aims, and has been centered as deserving 
 of its high reputation. Few will deny you he 
 possession of genius, and none will wish to rob 
 that genius of its reward. My views in the 
 •S 1 here impose upon myself are of another 
 kind It is the immorality of your writings that 
 &B 'constitute with me the chief theme of in- 
 vestigation. It is the deformity *««*"£ 
 you as a Christian and as a man. Vet I say not 
 that I will debar myself in these strictures from 
 such excursions, even of mere fancy, as may in 
 any measure fall in with my mam design , for 1 
 am not come solely to spy out the moral .**» 
 of the land, but to indulge i\° cc f™^'*2 
 to exhibit the variety of its soil and the richness 
 and exuberance of its productions 
 
 I pledge myself to no formal div.sion of the 
 
course of such reflections as I may eventua])y 
 be led mto m taking up the volumes of your 
 Lordskp s poetry. I say this with more ^ 
 
 thau r am Wllling to confess . but ^ are ^ 
 
 makers of our own minds and judgments, though 
 be our duty to improve them. It is a bad 
 school that g,ves us matter without method • 
 and m such a school I have, alas! l ea rnt bu 
 too much of the little 1 can boast to know. Half 
 a mans thoughts become refuse when they are 
 not regulated, and that, I have reason to fear 
 wdl be found eminently to be th e case with 
 m.ne. Your Lordship, however, discursive in 
 
 „"ot r lT iment and feeliDg of y™ souI > will 
 
 not be the person to condemn me. Both you 
 and myse ,f m t herejn become ame J 
 
 higher tribunal. 
 Permit me then, my Lord, in the first in- 
 
 aftcT; N aS S pre P aration for -hat may here- 
 after follow, cursorily to advert to the subjects 
 of your earlier poems. It is necessary to J m 
 both because these are the works upon which 
 I co„c eive , much of your best fame is founded,' 
 and because I wish to shew that your presen 
 lost state of mind has not come suddenly p 0n 
 you, but that from the very cradle of your 
 genius you have forced your muse into the ser- 
 vice of immorality. For, if I mistake t 
 
 TZ<7nl Pr ° ducti0ns wi » ^ fo«nd the seeds 
 •f that full harvest of impiety and licentiousness 
 
which flourishes with such vigour iu your " Cain" 
 
 and " Juan." » . ■ 
 
 It will not be necessary, nor mdeed am I able 
 to arrange such of your poems as I shal notice, 
 1 thdr precise order of time as to pubhcaton. 
 tSi I am aware, this fleld of — on 1^ 
 and ignorant. I have access to no complete 
 edition of them, and perhaps may now and then 
 have fallen in with the most incorrect. 1 will 
 a r er t lo them, therefore, as they happen to 
 come in detached parts to my hands. Taken in 
 what order they may, they but too ^eU sen. 
 the purpose for which 1 consent to refer to them 
 nor will any want of chronological arrangement 
 %l eithe'r their character or my remarks upon 
 
 ^am not, my Lord, very anxious about the 
 fate of these remarks, which, so far as they 
 ustly may, I wish to be considered as extending 
 to aulls of the same immoral description 
 with yourself- 1 enquire not whether they w. 
 ^Jke your ^^ZgZ ever 
 
 of the community that every writer shou d - J 
 himself. K my labours answer no useful end 
 miblic neglect will soon dispose of them. But 
 iftn any measure they chance " to come home 
 o menl business and bosoms f « «g — 
 in them any tendencies to, or capacities of pro 
 
ducing an antidote to the poison of such poetry, 
 I shall have my reward ; nor, in that case, will I 
 permit myself to be influenced by either danger 
 to be apprehended, or contempt or injury to be 
 sustained. A mind firm in the discharge of its 
 duty fears no danger, and, if it be not deserved, 
 feels no contempt.-! have done with prefacing. 
 
 Let us then, my Lord, go over together, though 
 merely with a view of touching upon, the subjects 
 
 °r^ U L e ^ ieSt and bestwork *- Of your poem 
 of Chide Harold, which we will put at the head 
 of this list, it is indeed difficult to say what does 
 const.tute the subject. Your hero is here, as 
 you yourself term him, simply a convenient per- 
 sonage to connect the thread of your narrative, 
 ihrough the instrumentality of this fictitious be- 
 ing, sentiments and feelings are thrown out upon 
 the world which, in its present unsettled state, 
 there could be little need of, and which in any 
 state of civilization must be highly injurious. The 
 work is without method, nor can be said to have 
 either plot, or fable, or a subsistence of any kind 
 iaking it through its various Cantos, it is at once 
 descriptive and immoral; full of beauty and in- 
 fidelity ; occasionally enchanting in its pensive- 
 ness, but uniformly repulsive by its philosophy 
 Ihere is scarcely a solitary recognition of virtue 
 as virtue, m any part of it. The Childe himself 
 seems a compound of all the worst passions 
 with which our human nature is afflicted under 
 its warmest climates and its vilest characters. He 
 
8 
 
 is bad in his religion, his morals, and his politics. 
 There is about him much of disdain and harsh 
 opinion of mankind ; and his feelings, when called 
 forth, are evidently of a mere ingraftment and 
 have nothing to do with the heart. Jon have 
 infused into him, it is true, " a kmd of illustrious 
 depravity and majestic madness *;" but the ge- 
 nuine heroic spirit he is a stranger to. He 
 delighteth in other sensations, and dwelleth 
 among other objects. 
 
 Rich, my Lord, as in these Cantos are your 
 descriptions of nature in every varied clime you 
 will yet not, I think, find Childe Harold an endur- 
 ing performance. In vain is there magic m its 
 beauties, grandeur in its sentiments, strength in 
 its execution, and a restless, ceaseless energy in 
 every part of it. Its magnificence is so overlaid 
 with sins against both morals and genius, that it 
 is impossible to peruse it, as works of immor- 
 tality are perused, with unmixed and increasing 
 pleasure. There is no enchantment in numbers, 
 Lit will make up for positive d^ty *~m 
 we willing to be wedded to works that set a^ 
 defiance all which ought to %£%*£ 
 sort of ostentation of evil rum *™S with a 
 body of the performance. It is wrme 
 wJched felicity to delight and corrupt in «ie 
 same breath. You raise an Eden amid a perfect 
 wilderness of all the finer feelings of the ouL 
 Every figure on your stained canvass puts forth 
 * Johnson's life of Dryden. 
 
the head of a syren and the tail of a scorpion. 
 Beauty is joined with sin, and sin is rendered 
 delightful ; nor does the young mind feel its error 
 till it finds its ruin. From this censure, however, 
 I must injustice exempt much of the last Canto 
 that has come under my notice. Verses like 
 these are not to be rejected because joined with 
 strong and lamentable incongruities. They are 
 to be held at their intrinsic value, and a well- 
 regulated judgment will inform us what that 
 value is. 
 
 You here and there indulge in allusions which 
 we can hardly read without a smile. Surely 
 calling for the iEgis of Pallas, and bustling up 
 the Shade of Achilles to affright a noble Lord 
 from taking away his marbles, is sufficiently 
 ridiculous. It was an useful and a holy depre- 
 dation, and may be defended on many grounds ; 
 but on what ground shall we apologize for his 
 inconsistency in descanting upon the violation of 
 the Parthenon, whose sacrilegious numbers have 
 so often violated mosques, temples, churches, 
 altars, and every thing bearing the shadow of a 
 likeness to sacred and ancient institutions ? 
 
 And yet, nothing daunted by this conscious- 
 ness, have you the hardihood to observe, " The 
 Parthenon, before its destruction in part, by fire 
 during the Venetian siege, had been a temple, a 
 church, and a mosque. In each point of view it 
 is an object of regard. It changed its worship- 
 pers; but still it was a place of worship thrice 
 
10 
 
 sacred to devotion: its violation is a triple 
 
 sacrilege."* 
 
 In the wanderings of Childe Harold, you seem 
 better to have preserved the scenery than the 
 mind of our present European states. The liber- 
 tinism of human nature, wherever found, you 
 indeed paint with a pencil worthy of the sub- 
 ject • but the distinguishing characteristics ot 
 individual countries are lost amid that blaze of 
 voluptuousness in which you involve every object. 
 Your poem too, though long, is never didactic. 
 You make your imaginary hero neither reflect 
 nor teach to any good purpose. You remove 
 him from place to place, not with the view of 
 drawing forth what is estimable as he goes along 
 but in the vain effort of escaping reproachful 
 recollections. In these excursions "etches 
 beautifully, it is true, the sceneries of Earth and 
 the idolatries of Heaven : but, having done this, 
 he feeds, like the progeny of sin, upon his own 
 bowels, and falls back on those disgusting por- 
 traitures of self, which is evermore the narrow and 
 primary object of his regard. It is impossible, 
 therefore, to be sorry when the work is closed. 
 
 » But where is he, the Pilgrim of my song, 
 The heing who upheld it through the past ? 
 Methinks he cometh late and tarries long. 
 He is no more-these breathings are his last ; 
 His wanderings done, his visions ebbmg fast, 
 
 » Childe Harold, Canto ii. Note 2. 
 
11 
 
 And he himself as nothing : — if he was 
 Aught but a phantasy, and could be classed 
 With forms which live and suffer— let that pass— 
 His shadow fades away into Destruction's mass."* 
 
 Yes, my Lord, but his soul remains; his 
 infidelity ; his immorality. All the dark passions 
 of that soul he has left behind him for the forma- 
 tion of future Harolds and the affliction of future 
 generations. We shall sooner forget the beau- 
 ties of this poem than its criminality. The one 
 will occasionally elicit our admiration ; the other 
 will perpetually corrupt our hearts. 
 
 Pass we on to The Giaour, a Turkish Tale. Here 
 you have chosen a subject ill according with any 
 chastised views of religion or morals. A female 
 slave pays for her libidinous disposition with her 
 life ; and her paramour, a Christian in his creed, 
 but a villain in his conduct, avenges one crime 
 by the commission of another. Your hero through- 
 out is a character composed of hardened and 
 fiery feelings. He deliberately endangers the 
 object of his love for the indulgence of his ap- 
 petites, and, with a consciousness about him of 
 the enormity of the offence, and of the just 
 punishment that awaits it, would still seduce his 
 mistress to the commission of that offence, and 
 expose her to the severity of that punishment. 
 It is, in short, a hateful story of passion deter- 
 mined upon gratification, though it wade through 
 
 * Canto iv. S. 164. 
 
12 
 
 blood. And surely no woman can be much 
 elated by the conquest of a heart, that, in the 
 agony of death, exults in the commission of 
 his crime, and confesses, on the very brink of 
 eternity, that for the pleasure of another such 
 illicit indulgence he would again endure the 
 bitterness and the shame. If this be not carry- 
 ing a criminal passion to its most debauched and 
 dreadful excess, in what page, my Lord, of 
 history, Heathen or Mahometan, shall we search 
 to find it ? 
 
 This poem, I perceive, purposes to be merely 
 the fragment of a Turkish tale. Extracts and 
 fragments are, I think, held to be no parts of 
 sound learning, or of true poetry. They rather 
 tend to the depreciation of both. They afford an 
 opportunity of choosing, or rejecting, at pleasure, 
 what we will, and thus break into that regu- 
 lar order and governance of the thoughts which 
 alone can insure an enduring performance. We 
 can judge from an arm, or hand, or other 
 costly relic, of the exquisite sculpture of the 
 figure now dilapidated or lost ; but it does not 
 seem so plain that these Parnassian gems are 
 proofs of the capacity of the poet for greater 
 performances. It may rather, perhaps, intimate 
 that he has concentrated his genius, and brought 
 his powers to their apex, and that, were he to 
 proceed further, the " multa et praeclara minan- 
 tis" would vanish, his images become stale, and 
 his execution spiritless. 
 
13 
 
 In The Bride of Abydos, another Turkish tale, 
 the woes are sung of seductive love and parental 
 disobedience ; of meditated assassination and 
 open violence ; of murder on the one part, and 
 rebellion on the other. Giaffir is a bad cha- 
 racter, and I am afraid Selim can hardly pass for 
 a good one. There is, however, and I remark it 
 with pleasure, no prophaneness, no licentious- 
 ness in this little story. Prophaneness was, in- 
 deed, not called for ; and happily the purity of 
 Zuleika forbids any approach to wantonness of 
 description. She is one of the most fascinating of 
 your heroines, only because she is one of the 
 most c6rrect. 
 
 Still, over the purest of your female charac- 
 ters you contrive to cast some shade of suspi- 
 cion that purity must wish away. You are not 
 disposed to paint even a virtuous woman consist- 
 ent in her virtue. You have represented Zuleika 
 as binding herself to Selim by vows certainly 
 not in consonance with their supposed consan- 
 guinity. Her promise never to bestow her hand 
 without his consent, is a tacit acknowledgment 
 that he may consider himself as the disposer of 
 her affections. There is surely nothing in this 
 very favourable to either her morals or her duty. 
 
 The relation of Selim in the second Canto is, 
 I think, long and uninteresting. And though, 
 altogether, this must be considered as a prime 
 production of your pen, it yet confirms the opinion 
 
14 
 
 very generally entertained, that the beauty of 
 your Lordship's poetry is of more luxuriant 
 growth when it takes root amid prophaneness 
 and immorality. Where you are disposed to be 
 virtuous, you are disposed to be tame. The 
 Bride of Abydos will, however, live in the public 
 estimation longer, probably, than most of your 
 works. It had been well for your fame, as well as 
 for society, had you oftener made these sacrifices 
 to decorum. The poet would have lost nothing by 
 it ; the man would have gained every thing. 
 
 In The Corsair, you continue the same immoral 
 cast of subject and character visible in the Giaour. 
 Your hero, for the sake of plunder, leaves one mis- 
 tress, brings back another whom he is obliged to 
 abandon to her fate, and after the slaughter of a 
 variety of persons, and the death of his heroine 
 by neglect and distraction, renounces his piracies, 
 and is no where to be found. I know not what 
 the feeling approaches to, as we peruse this work. 
 We are sorry to be delighted where we are so re- 
 peatedly insulted. Our taste here rebels against 
 our reason. We are prone to admire those very 
 outrages of common sense and common huma- 
 nity, which we ought to shrink from and despise. 
 Conrad, " linked with one virtue and a thousand 
 crimes ;" * Gulnare, as cruel as Lady Macbeth, 
 and as wanton as the wife of Potiphar, have yet 
 not the power to detach us from the sweetness of 
 
 * Corsair. 
 
15 
 
 the poetry and the sorrows of Medora. But this 
 is a poor praise, and weighs as nothing when we 
 recollect that the mass of the poem is but a mass 
 of corruption ; the history of a man, or rather of 
 a monster, whose mistress was " the only living 
 thing he could not hate."* 
 
 Lara falls short of none of the above poems 
 in the subject which you have chosen, or in the 
 sentiments with which you have invested it. It 
 is the recitation of the return of a stranger from 
 foreign climes, covered with mysterious delin- 
 quencies and distresses. Here you deal in the 
 same dark doings of mind visible in all your 
 works ; in the same scorn and pride of heart and 
 infidelity of spirit. Lara, indeed, I should term 
 one of your most finished characters of baseness. 
 He treads the earth at once a misanthrope and 
 a murderer ; an assassin that without honour 
 takes away life from others, and without a pause 
 of penitence, or a glimmering of faith, sinks, 
 amid the slaughter of his fellow-creatures, into 
 death himself. 
 
 That the poem has beauties, and of a high 
 form, may not be denied. That it has pathos in 
 a certain degree, and powers of description rarely 
 surpassed, all, I think, must acknowledge. But 
 there is a horror about it that chills the blood ; 
 a dark, sullen, cruel cast of soul in its hero, 
 which, in spite of its attractions, deliver it over 
 
 * Corsair. 
 
16 
 
 to reprobation. Even the fidelity of Kaled pre- 
 serves in the mind of the reader no spark of 
 affection for Lara. Even her constancy of soul 
 redeems not the poem from the neglect that must 
 await an unmixed recital of murder, of impeni- 
 tence, and of despair. 
 
 The Siege of Corinth is drawn with a powerful 
 pencil, but upon a baleful principle. Here we 
 have for the subject a renegade who renounces 
 his country, seeks the hand of a maiden against 
 the consent of her parent, joins himself to the 
 adversaries of her faith, fights against her father, 
 and, finally, perishes at the very moment when 
 life, or death, is alike become an object of his in- 
 difference. Throughout there is a fearless display 
 of infidelity ; a worthless renunciation of patriot- 
 ism ; an insulting defiance of all that makes up 
 the practical religion of the human heart. Alp 
 has a boundless, ferocious valour, but he has 
 nothing in the world besides. His love is weak 
 compared with his thirst for revenge ; and the 
 apparition of Francesca, full of those cold and 
 shrouded beauties that mark a disembodied state, 
 and with every solemnity of incidence to give 
 effect to her endeavours, labours his conversion 
 
 in vain. 
 
 Parisina is a poem of a description, I am 
 sorry to say, still more revolting. Here are cele- 
 brated the* loves of two guilty personages ; the 
 one false to her husband's honour, the other 
 
17 
 
 violating the bed of his parent. The decapita- 
 tion of the latter and the distraction of the former 
 wind up the incestuous tragedy. 
 
 In this work your Lordship may be said to 
 have given a presage of what you afterwards, 
 with higher powers of mischief, perfected in Don 
 Juan. Parisina may be considered as a volup- 
 tuous miniature sketch of that more finished 
 Satanic picture. It is a piece which horror, wan- 
 tonness, and impiety, share between them. There 
 is, indeed, no lengthened portraiture of ungo- 
 vernable affection ; no dwelling upon it in its 
 seductive forms as it unconsciously approaches 
 the very brink of criminality. One tumultuous 
 moment of burning guilt, and all is silent and 
 resigned suffering. All in Parisina is sorrow 
 without expression, and agony without com- 
 plaint. It is a rapidly passing scene of most 
 pernicious tendency, calculated in its design 
 to excite abhorrence, but in its execution so 
 abounding in energy and so rich in enchantment, 
 as to extort the praise we almost feel it a sin 
 upon our conscience to bestow. Hugo and Pari- 
 sina are the very instruments of corruption 
 which a politic brain, defying Heaven and futurity 
 would lay hold of to corrupt with the direst 
 effect. But, alas ! these are with you no infertile 
 subjects. Perfectly indigenous to the soil, they 
 spring forth and flourish in their native bed. 
 Care they need none; cultivation none. " Plough 
 
 B 
 
18 
 
 but the furrows, and the fruits arise ;" and they 
 arise too of the blackest growth, and of the 
 deadliest poison. It is not seduction in its hur- 
 ried, raptured, surprised moment that you paint ; 
 or in its gay, loose, libidinous dress ; or in its 
 slow, subtle, cautious, calculating gradations. 
 But it is lust with horror ; love with abomina- 
 tion; adultery with incest: the father's bed 
 denied by his own flesh and blood, and the crime 
 absolvable but by dipping his hands and wring- 
 ing his soul in the execution of his own flesh and 
 blood. It is, in short, virtue demolished in every 
 thought of the heart, and sin concentrated in 
 every portion of the deed. 
 
 The depravity manifested in this little poem is 
 greater than can well be conceived by those who 
 merely take it up for the purpose of delighting 
 themselves in its imagery. Could it be suspected, 
 my Lord, by any of your readers, that the dis- 
 covery of the guilt of an adulteress by an injured 
 husband, would give rise to one of the most 
 daringly prophane comparisons that ever entered 
 the breast of man ? 
 
 " He clasp'd her sleeping to his heart, ] 
 And listen'd to each broken word : 
 He hears — Why doth Prince Azo start, 
 
 As if the Archangel's voice he heard ? 
 And well he may — a deeper doom 
 Could scarcely thunder o'er his tomb, 
 When he shall wake to sleep no more 
 And stand the eternal throne before."* 
 
 * Parisina, vi. 
 
19 
 
 He who would venture upon an illustration so 
 impious, of a deed so depraved, can surprise no 
 one by any of his after-productions. It is a pre- 
 paration for criminality of thought, be it of as 
 deep and demoniac a die as it may. Who does not 
 admire this solemn and sublime allusion ? Who 
 does not shudder at its application ? Few could 
 have given to the distracting circumstance such 
 a beauty ; none could have imparted to it such a 
 flagitiousness.* 
 
 The Prophecy of Dante may rank with the 
 Bride of Abydos, as one of the least objection- 
 able of your works. There is an equability of 
 strength and fire running through the whole of it; 
 and though it differs considerably in many points 
 from both of your proposed models f, and still 
 
 * Shakespear has in one instance, I am sorry to observe, 
 fallen into a somewhat similar prophane comparison. 
 " He was a King, blest of the King of Kings. 
 Unto the French, the dreadful Judgment day 
 So dreadful will not be as was his sight." 
 
 (First Part of Henry VI. Act I. Scene I.) 
 But here evident extenuations will not fail to offer themselves 
 to the considerate mind ; while, in the instance above alluded to, 
 all attempt at extenuation is fruitless. We concede, however, 
 to Lord Byron the benefit of the apology, such as it is. 
 
 t " In adopting this plan," (says Lord Byron,) " I have had 
 in my mind the Cassandra of Lycophron and the Prophecy of 
 Nereus by Horace, as well as the prophecies of Holy Writ." 
 The Cassandra of Lycophron has, I think, been more closely 
 imitated in other parts of his Lordship's voluminous works 
 and where, though he is sufficiently extravagant, he neither 
 
 B 2 
 
20 
 more from the inspirations of holy writ, we may 
 yet say of the beauty of many of its incidents, 
 " these things are not made for forgetfulness." 
 Your picture of Italy in the second canto, and your 
 praise of sculpture and painting in the fourth, 
 let them have found their way into the poem 
 through what suspected channels they may, are 
 certainly of the most finished cast, and will be 
 read by all, will please all, and be remembered 
 by all. While the mind is entranced amid such 
 efforts of the muse, as rival in beauty the very 
 ideal forms of perfection she describes, we con- 
 sider not how many artists have contributed to 
 produce the glowing picture, or which of them 
 has the foremost claim to originality. 
 
 " The kindled marble's bust may wear 
 More poesy upon its speaking brow 
 Than aught less than the Homeric page may bear ; 
 One noble stroke with a whole life may glow, 
 Or deify the canvass till it shine 
 With beauty so surpassing all below, 
 That they who kneel to idols so divine 
 Break no commandment, for high Heaven is there 
 Transfused, transfigurated."* 
 
 The Venetian story of Beppo is east in the same 
 Paphian mould with your other productions, and 
 comes forth with the same Satanic image and 
 
 so well connects disjointed things, nor so truly copies nature in 
 the character of his frenzy. It would be well for society, were 
 the ravings of the modern poet as little regarded in our times, 
 as the divinations of the unfortunate prophetess were in hers. 
 * Canto i v. 
 
2i 
 
 super 'scription. Laura, the heroine, is repre- 
 sented as 
 
 " A woman of the strictest principle, 
 
 So much as to be thought almost invincible;" 
 
 and, of course, an object the more worthy to be 
 seduced into sin and misery. To say that it is 
 in the style of Juan, and partakes largely of its 
 indecent allusions to religion, mixed with that 
 voluptuous sort of description which, while mor- 
 tality is clothed in flesh and blood, cannot but 
 deeply tempt our unfixed virtues, may be suffi- 
 ciently to draw the character of this poem. For 
 elegant seduction it is all that it ought to be. It 
 disgusts not by its coarseness : it shocks not by 
 its brutality : it terrifies not by its impiety. Its 
 meditations of mischief are of a different cast. It 
 envelopes its purposes of destruction in its powers 
 of enchantment. It aims its ridicule at virtuous 
 decorum, and it rarely misses its mark. " O 
 mirth and innocence ! O milk and water !" Con- 
 viviality this upon a very insipid scale indeed, 
 for a muse so habitually inebriated, as to be un- 
 touched by any thing short of the proof spirit of 
 lewdness. Nothing must be brought into your 
 poetical slaughterhouse for immolation but youth 
 and purity; youth that has scarcely seen the 
 sun, and purity that has never known a stain. 
 The Devil himself, in Milton, had moments of 
 repentance ; but the muse of Lord Byron — a 
 wary, collected speculator upon mental demo- 
 
22 
 
 ralization ; a cold-blooded assassin of virtue, let 
 her inhabit what chaste and sacred mansions she 
 may— has none. She trusts to her numbers for 
 the reception of her principles, and smiles and 
 blasts in the same breath. 
 
 Mazeppa, a poem of the wildest cast, will not 
 shame those powers of libidinous description in 
 which your Lordship so delights to excel. " Rem 
 tibi Socraticse poterunt ostendere chartse !" No, 
 no. It is in the bowers of Venus, not in the phi- 
 losophy of Socrates, that we must seek for the 
 subjects of your muse. The story is short and 
 voluptuous. Here the song intended to take 
 captive the heart, dwells upon the fierce extremes 
 of love ; the love of a ruffian for an adulteress. 
 Theresa is made up of the same pliant materials 
 with the common run of your females ; and as in 
 Parisina and Beppo you offend against Heaven 
 itself, so here you again mix impiety with lasci- 
 viousness, and make futurity, with all its hopes 
 and fears, a matter of mere nerves. 
 
 " Theresa's fate I never knew."— No, my Lord, 
 nor did the wretch ever care to know. The se- 
 ducer is the last person in the world to waste a 
 single thought on his unfortunate victim. The 
 tenderness of memory, wherever it may turn, 
 alas ! never turns upon her. Though her own 
 heart break, be assured it will give no pang to 
 his. How should it, when Mazeppa, hoary in 
 wickedness and grey with years, is made to re- 
 peat the abandoned wish of your Giaour, that he 
 
23 
 
 might be permitted to live his life over again, 
 again to indulge in his adulteries and his crimes ! 
 This is the proper demoniac feeling that cleaves 
 to such a soul through life, through death; that 
 shrouds with the villain in his very grave, and is 
 destined, when he rises from it, to depart with 
 him to his own place. And who, my Lord, has 
 so admirably painted these feelings as yourself? 
 Who so chained down his genius in their ser- 
 vice? That, poetically considered, you have 
 made the most of your bad subject, I confess. 
 You have bordered it about with manifold beau- 
 ties, and garnished with the flowers of the spring, 
 the dish on which you serve up the limbs of Pe- 
 lops. We feast and loath, and loath and feast 
 again ; not apparently knowing, or not regarding, 
 that to these " devils" of your hot imagination, we 
 may, long before our sun is gone down, be called 
 upon to t*. sacrifice our sons and our daughters." 
 
 And here, by the way, suffer me to observe 
 how animated are your Lordship's portraitures of 
 the malicious heart. This wretch, who in many 
 circumstances seems to be but Harold and the 
 fraternity revived, rejoices in his unquenchable 
 thirst for vengeance. 
 
 " And if we do but watch the hour, 
 There never yet was human power 
 Which could evade, if unforgiv'n, 
 The patient search and vigil long 
 Of him who treasures up a wrong.'" * 
 
 * Mazeppa. 
 
24 
 
 Thank God ! this is the Italian, not the noble 
 English sentiment. It is the lesson you have 
 learnt abroad ; it was never taught you in your 
 own beloved country, where, whatever may be 
 our party feelings, we alike abominate feelings of 
 this nature, and where every page of British his- 
 tory still glows with British gallantry and for- 
 giveness. 
 
 Of your minor productions, a few of which 1 
 shall beg leave to advert to before 1 proceed to 
 your Dramas, it may be Observed, that they, for 
 the most part, speak the language and breathe the 
 spirit of their elder progeny. The Prisoner of 
 Chilian is, indeed, free from impiety and ribal- 
 dry. The foundation of the poem would not 
 admit of any unholy revellings in these perver- 
 sions of genius. It bespeaks a partiality for re- 
 publican governments and opinions, but such as 
 may well consist with virtue, where they are vir- 
 tuously entertained and conscientiously acted 
 upon for the public good, a hard trial of man's 
 infirm nature in any days but those of the most 
 decided purity and patriotism. As a whole, how- 
 ever, this poem imposes a heavy burden on our 
 feelings. It deals too much in the exhibition of 
 scenes of suffering, and sights of pain, and " hor- 
 rible imagining." These, when they arrest and 
 occupy attention, leave nothing to be regretted 
 when such a poem is finished. The mind cannot 
 go with unearthly delineations where the com- 
 
mon ground of all its passions and propensities, 
 of its hopes and fears, is entirely cut away. 
 
 Yet one praise has been here, I believe, pretty 
 generally accorded you. The Prisoner of Chillon 
 is considered as the most original production of 
 your pen. It is supposed to have less of bor- 
 rowed thought and imagery, less of that peculiar 
 expression about it which marks an identification, 
 in many of your other works, with contemporary 
 or departed genius. Standing more, therefore, 
 on its own insulated merits, it will be a fairer 
 criterion of the real powers of your poetry, and 
 will go down to posterity with a more genuine 
 reputation. 
 
 The next ground you take is a very imprudent 
 one, and far too holy to be defiled by so unholy a 
 muse. The Hebrew Melodies is an attempt to 
 clothe sacred poetry in a more beautiful garb 
 than its own. We cannot do it. Vida, in his 
 " Christiad," has afforded no encouragement to 
 such vain hopes. He has made it neither sublime 
 nor pious, neither a help to the study of Christia- 
 nity, nor an incitement. It is a poem dull, and 
 heavy, and feeble throughout, with nothing to 
 compel applause, and hardly any thing to in- 
 sure patience. Nor has his more modern fol- 
 lower fared much better. The " Calvary 1 ' of 
 Cumberland will be read, as every thing coming 
 from such a pen must be ; but no friend to his 
 fame will ever wish it to be brought to the ordeal 
 
26 
 
 of severe criticism. Heber's " Palestine" is 
 silently passing away. The truth is, Holy Scrip- 
 ture, to the mere English reader, speaks so well 
 in no language as its own. What we add to it 
 diminishes its value. What we take from it has 
 the same effect. What we change in it, we are 
 almost certain to change for the worse. Its ver- 
 nacular elegance is not to be surpassed, nor from 
 its native bed can we transplant its sublime 
 conceptions. We might as well dream of latin- 
 izing Homer and preserving his spirit. Even 
 Addison, with all his moral requisites for the 
 undertaking, so far as he dared to adventure on 
 these awful themes, has failed ; a circumstance 
 the less to be wondered at when Milton, with far 
 mightier powers, could barely keep his genius 
 from sinking, though borne in her flight 
 
 " Upon the seraph wings of ecstacy." 
 
 To add that Lord Byron too has been unsuccess- 
 ful, is to tell but half his disgrace. You have 
 fallen below Addison; below mediocrity. You 
 barely keep your head above the surface with 
 Sternhold and Hopkins, and Brady and Tate. 
 Indeed there is scarcely a stave in the collection 
 which these poetical compeers would feel any 
 pride in adopting. In this compartment you 
 seem altogether out of your element. The fire 
 of your genius smoulders away when you ap- 
 proach these awful subjects. Your strength 
 withers when you employ it on this rock of ages. 
 
27 
 
 There is, in truth, such a miserable leanness in 
 the soul of these Melodies, that you no longer 
 appear to us as a poet. You are a mere versi- 
 fier, a doer of the Psalms of David into English 
 calculated to undo all the devout impressions we 
 have received from them. And if, as hath been 
 observed, " the Hebrew idioms run into the 
 English tongue with a particular grace and 
 beauty *," you are the more inexcusable for hav- 
 ing imparted so little beauty and grace to them. 
 
 One solitary spark alone remains to convince 
 us that these songs are really the offspring of 
 your Lordship's muse, that tendency to wanton 
 description, which not even the Hill of Zion and 
 the Sanctuary in ruins have power altogether to 
 extinguish so long as the daughters of Jerusalem 
 stand before you in their fascinations. It is to 
 be regretted that this beautiful portion of Holy 
 Writ should so moderately have been translated 
 by various pens at various times, and that these 
 labours should only have tended to disgust whom 
 they were designed to delight. But that the 
 records of our faith should find their solemnity 
 insufficient to save them from the sacrilege to 
 which they are here doomed, is more than a sub- 
 ject of lamentation ; it is an insult alike to our 
 religion and our taste. 
 
 Yet how should it be otherwise when these 
 records fall into hands so little touched by devo- 
 
 * Spectator, vol. vi. No. 405. 
 
28 
 
 tional feelings as to " rhyme and revel with the 
 dead," and " madly play with his forefather's 
 bones" almost in the literal sense of the distracting 
 suggestion. Your Lordship's Lines inscribed upon 
 a Cup formed from a Skull, are a disgrace to your 
 muse, and, though some have looked upon them 
 as a high effort of genius, must be considered 
 as disgustingly prophane and insolently brutal. 
 Such a cup, though not, it seems, entirely the in- 
 vention of your own fancy, has traits of horror 
 about it which no fancy, save your own, could 
 have had the power or the heart to have given it. 
 The verses are the fabrication of a mind that, 
 wearied with stale and common offences, would 
 carry pollution into the very grave itself. Here 
 we have a poet, bearing the form and character of 
 a human being, that can assimilate with things 
 dreadful and holy, sentiments of ribaldry and 
 looseness ; that can jest upon mortality in its 
 most solemn vestment ; that can associate with 
 bacchanalian ideas and gross allusions a theme, 
 which, of all others that man is acquainted with, 
 is most fitted for the extinguishment of such 
 ideas ; that can contemplate a relic of our de- 
 cayed and departed nature, which should cut out 
 of his soul the whole body of licentiousness at 
 once, and terrify him into repentance, not only 
 with no abatement of this sin, but with a pre- 
 pared resolution to delight in and to deepen it. 
 This is, indeed, in its most perverted sense, an 
 
29 
 
 awful mirth. Gracious God ! that a wretch should 
 be found so hardened to the feelings of futurity as 
 to sport with what should shake him from the 
 strong holds of his prophaneness ; with what, in 
 his retired moments, when man talks with his 
 Maker, should calmly speak to him of all the 
 errors in his past, and all the crimes in his pre- 
 sent conduct ; of that penitence which the Al- 
 mighty demands, and of that punishment which 
 his justice denounces ! Lines like these are an 
 equal violation of the genius of the poet and of 
 the faith of the Christian. They originate in a 
 stupid, hardened, proud perverseness of soul ; the 
 effusion of one, who, forgetful of the rebuke of a 
 lost but lofty mind, — 
 
 " I dare do all that may become a man ; 
 Who dares do more, is none—"* 
 
 voluntarily renounces his nature, and is content 
 to be considered as any thing but a man. 
 
 Of your Address on the opening of Drury Lane 
 Theatre, the admirers of your poetry will do well 
 to be silent. It is the work of Lord Byron, not 
 in his " hours of idleness," but in his moments of 
 dotage. It is a proof upon record, and a more 
 melancholy one was never exhibited, of the do- 
 tage of all parties. A thing of greater vanity and 
 vacancy never issued from the press. The com- 
 petition between rival candidates must have 
 been of the most miserable description for this 
 
 * Macbeth. 
 
30 
 
 poor, puling brat to have carried off the prize. 
 The bare acceptance of such a prologue, on such 
 an occasion, would have been sufficiently dis- 
 graceful—but to crown it with laurel — O Midas, 
 Midas ! how hast thou been belied ! 
 
 Did your Lordship at the time recollect Dr. 
 Johnson's lines on a somewhat similar occasion ? 
 Did you recollect them, and not blush to set this 
 gilded gingerbread booby by the side of that 
 majestic figure, conscious as you must have been 
 that there would inevitably lie a competition be- 
 tween them; between one of the noblest and one 
 of the dullest efforts of poetry ; between an ad- 
 dress that identified itself with the genius which 
 it celebrated, and a motley, mawkish gallimaw- 
 frey that all genius, save that of the Thespian 
 Synod, must have been ashamed of? You had 
 this deification of Shakespear before you, and yet 
 ventured your own. You compared, no doubt, 
 their thoughts, their imagery,their spirit, their lan- 
 guage. You did all this, and, in the face of all 
 this, presented your " Address on the opening of 
 Drury Lane Theatre !" The conclusion admits of 
 no comment, that, as a modest estimator of your 
 own talents, does not overwhelm you with con- 
 fusion. 
 
 From this frothy, ephemeral production, which, 
 like Brady's translation of the Eneid, that, " when 
 dragged into the world, did not live long enough 
 to cry," will probably soon find its grave in its 
 
31 
 
 contempt, I turn with pleasure, so far as its 
 poetry is concerned, to your Monody on the Death 
 of the Right Hon. R. B. Sheridan, spoken at 
 the same theatre, and worthy in the sublimity of 
 its numbers, of the eloquent and sublime mind 
 whose unhappy decadency it at once laments and 
 immortalizes. But leaving the composition to an- 
 swer for itself, as it well may, permit me to ob- 
 serve, that in these lines is but too visible a dan- 
 gerous apology for Mr. Sheridan's immoral con- 
 duct ; an apology which, carried to those lengths 
 you here insist upon, might prove injurious to the 
 necessary distinction between virtue and vice. 
 Speaking of this gentleman's deviation, in the 
 latter part of his life, from the wisdom that had 
 before, in a good degree, insured his repute, and 
 adverting to those to whom the mind in its ruins 
 " yields a base delight," you exclaim — 
 
 " Ah ! little do they know 
 
 That what to them seem'd vice, might be but woe." 
 
 My Lord, we must not consent to be so im- 
 posed upon — we must not be tempted from our 
 safe and useful rule of judging of the tree by 
 its fruit. It would be destructive of every spe- 
 culation upon morals were we to do otherwise. 
 Abstractedly considered, it may, perhaps, little 
 concern society from what cause an unrighteous 
 conduct springs. It is the conduct itself which 
 does the injury, and which must, therefore, be 
 reprobated and repressed. "Were we to adduce 
 
32 
 
 a case somewhat, perhaps, in point ; were we to 
 listen to your own frequent complainings through- 
 out your works of woes, and miseries, and blight- 
 ed prospects, and hopes eradicated, and a whole 
 host of sufferings, of which, however, you very 
 prudently conceal the moving cause, we might 
 be persuaded, in our moments of admiration or 
 pity, to pardon your offences against public de- 
 corum. We might resolve the blasphemy of 
 Cain into " a rooted sorrow," no otherwise to be 
 " plucked from the memory," and the licentious- 
 ness of Juan into a mere physical effort to 
 
 " Cleanse the foul bosom of that perilous stuff 
 Which weighs upon the heart."* 
 
 But we have no precedent for a moral casuistry 
 of this kind. The evil spread over community 
 in its nakedness, must in its nakedness be at- 
 tacked, and, if possible, eradicated. Though, 
 therefore, we are far from wishing to " track the 
 steps of glory to the grave," we must yet not 
 suffer a spirit of unrestrained indulgence to call 
 itself by that illustrious name, or to become en- 
 titled to our grateful recollections. You might 
 as well confound the distinction between arts 
 and sciences, between speculation and practice, 
 as to palm upon us the conduct proceeding from 
 a corruption of the mind, for the effects produced 
 by the irregularity of its powers. While we have 
 
 * Macbeth. 
 
33 
 
 before us so many noble examples to the con- 
 trary, in both ancient and modern times, we can 
 never subscribe to the maxim, that Genius owes 
 its moral depravities "half to the ardour which 
 its birth bestows." The deduction converted 
 into a canon of criticism, would be horrible. 
 
 Your celebrated little effusion, Fare thee well! 
 the last I shall advert to, is, perhaps, best com- 
 mended by speaking the least about it. It 
 must not be suffered to offer itself for discus- 
 sion. It approaches the confines of your do- 
 mestic joys and sorrows, and we can only re- 
 gret that such happiness as Providence seemed 
 to have laid up in store for you, should, by 
 whatever means, or through whatever instru- 
 mentality, have been so cruelly blighted. Its 
 pathos will win many a silent, lonely heart that 
 is suffering with " those that they see suffer." I 
 lament that this fine poem should have been 
 given to the world under circumstances that 
 render it too probable it may be doomed to 
 " waste its sweetness on the desert air." It is 
 a poem, however, that is destined, I suspect, to 
 tell heavily against you, on a ground which I 
 forbear to take, but which, if an estimate can be 
 formed of human feelings under excruciating cir- 
 cumstances, will leave you in a situation, where, 
 to be merely " seared in heart, and lone, and 
 blighted," is to be comparatively in Elysium. 
 
 Having thus taken such notice of your earlier 
 
 c 
 
34 
 
 poems as I have deemed necessary, let us now 
 proceed to what in courtesy, I suppose, we must 
 designate your Dramatic performances. I shall 
 touch but upon a few of them, and these such 
 as I have been able more easily to meet with. 
 Here, upon a very cursory inspection, we shall 
 find that you have, perhaps, rather changed the 
 form of evil than impaired its spirit; that you 
 have moved the passions more, but have not in- 
 jured virtue less ; and that, upon the whole, you 
 have increased our baser propensities, without 
 increasing either the strength to withstand, or 
 the power to repel them. 
 
 I know not the order of these compositions, 
 and will begin, therefore, with The Two Foscari. 
 In this play there is much of powerful painting ; 
 much that pathetically goes to the heart, and 
 fetches up from it honourable feelings. Still 
 there is the same family likeness, the blood of 
 the Satanic muse running drowsily through its 
 veins. There is unbelief dressed out in its usual 
 garments, and, occasionally, the same occult 
 system of divinity, the same heavy darkness of 
 painting that we shall see made use of in the 
 Mystery of Cain. The character of Marina is, I 
 think, ably drawn, and is, in many parts of it, an 
 exception to your usual female portraits. But, 
 though of an heroic spirit, the taint is upon her. 
 She is made the wild advocate of liberty, abu- 
 sing, like Carlile's wife, and nearly in the same 
 slang, the judges, ministers, and potentates of 
 
35 
 
 the realm. Constantly she palsies her claim upon 
 our pity by the incoherence and violence of her 
 rebukes ; and we should more have compassion- 
 ated her sufferings and admired her fidelity, had 
 these sufferings been borne with greater resigna- 
 tion, and that fidelity been evinced by a higher 
 and a calmer dignity. 
 
 The Doge of Venice, a historical tragedy in 
 five acts, is a very long, and not a very happy 
 production of your pen, considering you had 
 taken four years duly to meditate upon it.* It 
 ought to have come out a lovelier and a more 
 genuine offspring. Its beauties are limited to its 
 descriptions, but its defects spread through the 
 whole. The Doge himself is an insufferably 
 tedious and tautological character; and his 
 egotism so runs out upon all subjects as to tire 
 the reader, and, I should have thought, the very 
 author too. But there is no calculating, it 
 seems, the degree of self-complacency when we 
 are employed in shadowing out our own dig- 
 nified turn of mind, and presenting it, in various 
 hues and under different Protean shapes, to an 
 admiring world. This great man, wherever he 
 is, or on whatever topic engaged, talks treason, 
 and afterwards convicts himself of his crime. 
 The poorest arguments are put into his mouth, 
 and the vilest conduct into his heart. A stain 
 upon the honour of the female character, (a cha- 
 
 * See Preface to this play. 
 
 c 2 
 
36 
 
 racter that in few of your writings your Lordship 
 has suffered to escape without stain,) is here 
 made the pretext for a conspiracy which has for 
 its object the murder of the whole Venetian 
 Senate ; and so entirely does this principle of 
 revenge take possession of the Doge's soul, that 
 he actually dies with the denunciation of the 
 whole body quivering on his lips ; " I leave my 
 curse on her, and hers for ever!" 
 
 Wantonness, to be sure, in this play there is 
 none. With calculations of rebellion, blood, 
 and murder, such a feeling would have been out 
 of its element. The character of Angiola is 
 mild, and pure, and almost perfect. But you 
 endow her with a wordy and somewhat elaborate 
 speech in her last interview with her husband — 
 certainly not the most seasonable time for it — 
 where she is made to go through the very same 
 course of erudite history which you had yourself 
 flourished upon before in your preface ; and once 
 more it is found expedient to put into requisition 
 the rape of Helen, the death of Achilles, the ex- 
 pulsion of Tarquin, the sack of Rome, and the 
 firing of Persepolis, as lessons of instruction — 
 
 " To wretches how they tamper, in their spleen, 
 With beings of a higher order." 
 
 Somewhat unfortunately, however, these higher 
 orders of beings are, throughout the play, re- 
 presented in the person of the Doge, as them- 
 
37 
 
 selves unceasingly tampering with all the fac- 
 tious plebeians that can be got together, by 
 any crooked artifices, in the republic of Venice. 
 But consistency is not your Lordship's strong 
 ground. 
 
 The next drama I shall notice is in subject, in 
 character, in sentiment, a very objectionable 
 one. In Sardanapalus we have a debauched and 
 impious sovereign giving himself up to the low 
 gratifications of sense, and leaving the rule of 
 his dominions to whatever hands may choose to 
 usurp it. Throughout the play, strikingly beau- 
 tiful as are detached parts of the poetry, there 
 is a perpetual hostility to all established institu- 
 tions, civil and religious, and a perpetual insult 
 of all established modes of belief. A compa- 
 rison is here drawn between a life of sensuality 
 and of military glory, which, with a weak and 
 unmanly sophistry, resolves the former into true 
 enjoyment and the latter into oppression and 
 murder. With a total disregard of dramatic jus- 
 tice, Sardanapalus, sunk in vicious indulgence, 
 is made an object of admiration, and the palm 
 of heroic suffering is taken from the faithful 
 wife to be bestowed upon the wanton paramour. 
 The Greek girl Myrrha dies with her lord, while 
 Zerina the queen, whose affection is only inferior 
 to her misfortunes, is dismissed, after nearly per- 
 suading her brutal and indifferent husband to 
 relent and become a man. 
 
38 
 
 Here too, as in Mazeppa— -for these bitter 
 waters of Marah, in which you so much delight, 
 you can draw genuine from no fount like your 
 own — we have the sentiments and feelings of the 
 Giaour over again. While Myrrha makes a liba- 
 tion to the gods in her last moments, Sardanapalus, 
 with revolting ideas of the marriage state, makes 
 his to the recollection of his past sensualities ; 
 and, with an expiring insult of sacred persons 
 and things, dies with the appropriate feelings 
 such conduct and opinions are calculated to 
 create. 
 
 « For the future, 'tis 
 
 In the hands of the Deities, if such there be ; 
 I shall know soon." 
 
 Dead and putrid carcases, we are told, turn by 
 degrees into respirable air ; but what process of 
 nature or of art shall ever convert the poison of 
 such sentiments into wholesome nourishment? 
 One of the Cato-street gang, (a butcher) executed 
 with Thistlewood, made, I think, a somewhat 
 similar demonstration of his faith ; but I cannot 
 take upon me to say whose was the original 
 thought. The offal had perhaps better be di- 
 vided between you. 
 
 Of Manfred, I confess, I know not what to say, 
 or how to characterize it, so small a portion is 
 there of it convertible into common sense. It is 
 a wild, incomprehensible work ; a drama that 
 disdains dramatic form, and is unintelligible to 
 any powers of reason that mere mortality is 
 
39 
 
 gifted with. It sullenly indeed sets all acknow- 
 ledged rules at defiance. It has, correctly speak- 
 ing, neither beginning, middle, nor end. We 
 know not what action is imitated in the fable, 
 what manners distinguish the personages, or what 
 sentiments individualize the characters. The 
 scene and the subject are equally out of nature. 
 Human feelings and sympathies have little to 
 do with this redoubtable hero. He is no man 
 for our common-place world. A mere earthly 
 pollution of mind and morals is an object below 
 his especial regard. He seems determined to 
 carry the powers of seduction among other 
 beings, and into the confines of other dominions. 
 The consort of Pluto is -hardly safe from the wiles 
 of this Giovanni. The very spirits and shadows 
 of created being, trapped out in I know not what 
 mantlings of temptation unfelt by flesh and blood, 
 must undergo the solicitations of their amalga- 
 mated half-disembodied, half-carnal adorer. 
 
 It was said of Dryden, that " he delighted to 
 tread upon the brink of meaning, where light and 
 darkness begin to mingle ; to approach the pre- 
 cipice of absurdity, and hover over the abyss of 
 unideal vacancy.'' * Your Lordship here seems 
 ambitious of working after the same model, and 
 of letting yourself loose upon the realms of non- 
 sense. How far the example of so illustrious a 
 prototype may bear you out, I know not ; but 
 
 * Johnson's Life of Dryden. 
 
40 
 
 whoever can read the drama of Manfred, and ac- 
 knowledge no feeling of this " unideal vacancy" 
 in its pages, must have a finer conception of the 
 sublime and beautiful than ever entered the mind 
 of man, formed, strengthened, and instructed 
 after the usual manner of men. 
 
 Johnson, in his admirable preface to the plays 
 of Shakespear, remarks, that " it will not easily 
 be imagined how much he excels in accommo- 
 dating his sentiments to real life ;" and adds, that 
 "the Theatre under any other direction is peopled 
 by such characters as were never seen, con- 
 versing in a language that was never heard, upon 
 topics which will never arise in the commerce of 
 mankind." How much do these reflections go 
 to the condemnation of Manfred, and of the 
 whole of his heterogeneous train that make " no 
 approaches to the possibilities of real life,'' and 
 among whom there is not a single sentiment, 
 incident, or situation, that assimilates itself with 
 any of the known feelings of mankind. If, there- 
 fore, it was " the praise of Shakespear that his 
 drama is the mirror of life," and that " he who 
 has mazed his imagination, in following the 
 phantoms which other writers raise up before 
 him, may here be cured of his delirious ecsta- 
 cies, by reading human sentiments in human 
 language," it must surely be your Lordship's 
 disgrace, that, in such mysterious productions, 
 whether narrative or dramatic, as you have 
 been pleased to pour forth upon your afflict- 
 
41 
 
 ed country, nature, religion, morality, are all 
 entirely renounced, and nothing offered for 
 public edification, but characters that, it is to be 
 hoped, never existed, sentiments that were never 
 entertained, and feelings that were never ex- 
 perienced. 
 
 But you have, it seems, a poor opinion of the 
 dramatic barbarian, and may not, therefore, readi- 
 ly stand convicted of error by so insufficient an 
 appeal. We have no better standard to try your 
 works of this nature by. Pope — your great poet, 
 " whom the surviving world would snatch from 
 the wreck, and let tBe rest sink with the peo- 
 ple," * — Pope wrote no tragedies. We smile at 
 the vanity of these opinions. But Shakespear's 
 fame will suffer no reproach from being under- 
 valued by Lord Byron. His plays and your 
 dramas do, indeed, " differ in dignity ;" nor is it 
 any wonder that the trammelled composer of 
 the one should be incapable of estimating the 
 wild and mighty powers of the other. Compare 
 them— What ! Hyperion with a Satyr ? Why, we 
 should be crazier than your own Manfred to sully 
 the mind with only a thought of such comparison. 
 Plato, we know, fancied himself at one time a 
 poet, as you have been cockered up to believe 
 yourself a tragedian. But the philosopher, con- 
 scious that he could never enter the field with 
 Homer, prudently committed his effusions to the 
 flames- Plato was a wise man. 
 
 * Lord Byron's Letter to Mr. Bowles. 
 
42 
 
 These, my Lord, are the whole of your volu- 
 minous works that I intend, in the present Letter, 
 to advert to. There are others which I have not 
 seen, and some which, I suspect, I have not so 
 much as heard of. But I have got abundantly 
 enough for my purpose, and it now only remains, 
 following the scope of my design, to offer such 
 remarks upon them, considered in their general 
 character and tendency, as they seem to call for. 
 
 In the first place, then, give me leave to observe, 
 that a great defect, and, poetically considered, an 
 inexpiable one, independent of more serious ob- 
 jection, runs through the entire body of these 
 poems. It must be evident, on the slightest in- 
 spection, that a gross sameness pervades the libi- 
 dinous mass. Your impieties and ribaldries ; your 
 sneers, and jests, and gibes, are scions of a com- 
 mon stock. Out of one quiver you shoot every 
 arrow, and every arrow dipped in the same poison. 
 Indeed, there is such an identity in these *' thick 
 coming" compositions, that having read one of 
 your poetical incentives to immorality, we have 
 read all. One soul -shines out in Greece, in 
 Spain, in Italy, in whatever beautiful clime your 
 heroes blast by their presence. Amid a great 
 variety of personages and incidents, the main 
 work is yet going on every where alike. There 
 is a certain quantity of loose prophaneness, the 
 staple commodity; a floating mass of offensive 
 matter which is taken up, in crude and hasty 
 
43 
 
 portions, by every character as it passes. When 
 Harold drops off, we find his evil genius revived 
 in the Giaour ; and when the Giaour expires, it 
 springs from his ashes, and, gathering fresh life, 
 performs its transmigrations through the Corsair, 
 the Renegade, and the whole crew of worthies 
 issuing from the same prolific bed. Like the 
 careful mother * who obtained that the spirit of 
 one departed son should infuse itself into and 
 strengthen the living principle of the other, you 
 invest your successive heroes with each others' 
 crimes, until, in Cain and Juan, they attain to 
 the fulness of their measure. 
 
 Here, where Genius should shew itself in one 
 of its finest qualities, it shrinks into imbecility. 
 Homer particularly surpassed in his* varied and 
 accurate delineation of character. " Every God 
 that is admitted into his poem, acts a part 
 which would have been suitable to no other 
 deity. His princes are as much distinguished by 
 their manners as by their dominions ; and even 
 those among them whose characters seem wholly 
 made up of courage, differ from one another as 
 to the particular kinds of courage in which they 
 excel. "t He also, the same writer tells us, " does 
 not only outshine all other poets in the variety, 
 but also in the novelty of his characters. "J But 
 you, my Lord, have to boast of nothing of 
 
 * Faery Queene. Book iv. Canto ii. 
 t Spectator, No. 278. % Id. 
 
44 
 
 the sort. You neither surprise us with new 
 portraitures of the human mind, nor with any 
 variations of the old. You neither bring to your 
 poems the aid of such a variety of characters as 
 is to be found in the world ; nor do you attempt 
 to diversify the usual produce of human nature 
 by the invention of such as are not. On the con- 
 trary, any sentiment uttered by one hero will 
 come as appropriately from the mouth of another. 
 All of them may change speeches with little or 
 no violation of their mental costume. Their dis- 
 tinguishing qualities may be promiscuously cast 
 into a bag, and it matters not which of them 
 make the first choice : he is sure to be fitted, 
 whether he fish out his own particular enormities 
 or not. For, according to your Lordship's Py- 
 thagorean process, differently embodied we have 
 the individual spirit still. The Satanic feature 
 begins with Harold, and passes through " the 
 honoured file." They are all clothed in the same 
 mysterious garments ; all entertain the same 
 abhorrent sentiments ; all act the same unprin- 
 cipled parts ; and, to avoid the terrors of a re- 
 tributive justice, are all consigned to the same 
 protecting annihilation. 
 
 And this sameness obtains even where we 
 should have supposed the field wide enough to 
 have avoided it. It takes place in nearly every, 
 and in the very best parts of your works ; in the 
 presumptive delineations of your own propen- 
 
45 
 
 sities ; in the more sober train of your reflections ; 
 in your descriptions of the varied and lovely face 
 of Nature ; and in the portraitures, exquisite as 
 they many of them are, of the charms of woman. 
 In this latter instance especially, we shall per- 
 ceive a lamentable repetition of ideas and 
 images ; a lascivious display of the female figure, 
 with a total nakedness and precocity of the 
 female mind. The rule of your poetical statuary 
 is fixed. All your heroines are beautiful, and 
 all your beauties are libidinous. The drapery is 
 indeed elegantly folded, and the form from the 
 chisel of Phidias ; but evermore some demon or 
 other infuses into them the soul of the Seraglio, 
 so that they are drawn in the colours of Heaven 
 wastefully and to no purpose. Even where they 
 chance to escape pollution from your pencil, you 
 leave them characters of sand ; and we are at 
 liberty to contemplate the Zuleikas, the Kaleds, 
 and the Medoras — confessedly among the fairest 
 offspring of your fancy — almost in any light we 
 please. 
 
 It is, in fact, corporeal charm alone that shines 
 out with you Love's guiding star; a perfect soul- 
 less character; a Venus rising from the sea, or 
 reposing on her Paphian couch, compacted of 
 elements that make up the paradise of Mahomet. 
 With a familiar accommodation to Eastern man- 
 ners, your protestations are addressed to flowing 
 tresses, ruddy lips, and blooming cheeks. 
 
46 
 
 *' Hear my vow before I go. 
 Zut] fj,Qf aa'Q dyairu." * 
 
 Thus it is that you woo your " Maid of Athens," 
 and in this language do you express your regard 
 for every maiden of every country. But what 
 woman of honour will thank you for such insult- 
 ing compliments to her charms? The "ribald 
 Steno" is not more abhorrent to her feelings. 
 You disgust while you adore. You distress 
 while you praise, and you praise but to distress. 
 The Arnaout song is, with you, the song of the 
 heart ; " Qurmini dua civileni Roba "si siarmi tildi 
 m."t I may not, my Lord, disguise the truth. 
 The " cinders," the "bunch of flowers," and the 
 " pebble $;" in other words, the Haram'slove and 
 the Musulman s lust, are, I fear, alone declara- 
 tive of the nature of your affection towards any 
 woman. Can she desire a grosser adorer, a viler 
 deification ? 
 
 This libidinous sameness is alike disgraceful to 
 the powers of your understanding and of your 
 muse. The genius of our best poets has been 
 emulous to describe human nature in her per- 
 petually varied attitudes of mind. Voluptuous- 
 ness is rarely drawn by them with such a pencil 
 that you can say their idolatries are of the same 
 standard, and must be worshipped with the same 
 rites. How correctly are the various personages 
 
 * Poems, Song vii. t Harold, Canto ii. Note 30. 
 
 X Poems, Note 3. 
 
47 
 
 depicted in Chaucer's " Canterbury Tales." His 
 pilgrims, as they pass in review, are all true to 
 nature, and yet all essentially different from each 
 other. They shew the effects of their education 
 in the unequal endowment of their understand- 
 ings and the diversified feelings of their souls. 
 They are family likenesses of the times ; the peo- 
 ple of their own particular age ; but abounding, 
 as every age must, in dissimilarity of manners, 
 persons, humours, hearts, and souls. It was a 
 fine field the poet had before him, and he has 
 delightfully expanded it to our view. He has 
 led us through every part of the changing scenery, 
 and to every part he has given interest by giving 
 accuracy. It is one varied moving picture of 
 decayed manners and departed persons. 
 
 If you say that your subjects required you to 
 fall into this sameness of character ; that your 
 heroes being all villains, and villains from the 
 cradle to the grave, it was necessary to paint 
 them in an uniform blackness of heart ; I answer, 
 that inferior artists certainly might find it neces- 
 sary, but that the fire of genius would, under 
 even these confined boundaries, strike out some 
 diversity of feature. Where there are neither 
 hopes nor fears, compunction nor belief, cer- 
 tainly all the remorseful workings of the soul are 
 lost to the poet; all the impassioned feelings 
 balancing between high ambitions and daring 
 crimes ; between thirst for vengeance and dread 
 
48 
 
 of punishment. But still something, perhaps 
 much, is left. Our great Poet of Nature has, like 
 yourself, furnished us, amid those varieties inci- 
 dent to the children of men, with a host of villains. 
 Even these opprobrious characters, however, he 
 has not exhibited after the same dull, monotonous 
 manner. Macbeth and Iago are essentially dif- 
 ferent. Edmund, a thoroughpaced villain, is 
 distinguished from both. Angelo is a hypocri- 
 tical villain, and so are Claudius, the usurping 
 King of Denmark, and his courteous instruments 
 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. But in every 
 play where the evil mind is necessary to be 
 drawn, it is so delineated that the personages 
 are as distinct as an exhibition of the different 
 vices and crimes of human nature can make them. 
 The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately 
 wicked. Shakespear has anatomized this heart; 
 and though Gonerill and Regan be, in a good 
 measure, twin vipers, yet in the foldings of their 
 suilt we may still, perhaps, discover a variation 
 in the degree of their crime. The " unnatural 
 hags" have not been made so by exactly the 
 same process. 
 
 In Milton, we perceive a similar careful dis- 
 tinguishment. It is the same base metal that 
 runs from the crucible, but cast into different 
 moulds. Satan and Beelzebub, Moloch and 
 Belial, are so prominently separated, and have 
 their characters so admirably preserved, that, 
 
49 
 
 let us but hear their sentiments, and they indivi- 
 dually stand before us. This great poet has 
 drawn his shades of guilt with such discrimina- 
 tion, that the wickedness of these personages 
 seems like different evil qualities of the mind. 
 They all indeed speak the language of revolt, 
 and are smitten with the spirit of blasphemy; 
 they all give into such sentiments, as they, who 
 withdraw allegiance from a lawful Sovereign are 
 apt to imbibe; but the degrees of depravity are 
 accurately marked, and the madness of violence 
 excellently distinguished from the smooth and 
 serpentine windings of craft. Satan is ever 
 Satan, and Moloch is ever Moloch; but they 
 are never one ; nor is Mammon, or Belial, like to 
 either of them. 
 
 Now, this sameness, my Lord, there is the 
 less excuse for, inasmuch as you were not com- 
 pelled to give these repeated pictures of villainy 
 to mankind. The call was not imperative for 
 their exhibition. You had not, like the historian, 
 to describe the characters and events of past 
 ages in such colours as justice required; or, at 
 the voice of truth, to paint our human nature as 
 it glares on us, all horrible and hateful, in the 
 burning pages of ambition. Yours was a beauti- 
 ful and unlimited field ; your subjects, the sponta- 
 neous productions of your own mind, and where, 
 like the benevolent Richardson— second only to 
 Shakespear in his knowledge of the human heart 
 
 d 
 
50 
 
 and his fine delineations of it— you might have 
 drawn, at once, for the edification and delight of 
 your fellow-creatures ; for their confirmation in 
 dignity and their settlement in virtue. For 
 though a poet is advised, and justly, to transform 
 himself into the character which he exhibits, 
 and to be, as it were, the ideal villain, for the 
 moment, of his own imagination, yet is this no 
 apology for everlastingly dwelling upon the same 
 train of thought; for everlastingly pourtraying 
 the vilest propensities of the mind, and actually 
 living and dying amid the same circle of volup- 
 tuousness; the same fierce, and brutal, and 
 hardening sensuality. It is a fatal symptom. It 
 proves the heart to be dead in trespasses and sins 
 of this nature ; to be full of these unholy images; 
 to be sunk and saturated in the gross sentiments 
 it is evermore eliciting; which are perpetually 
 present ; which come first ; which depart last ; 
 and, unconnected with which, your very genius 
 droops, and seems disposed to involve itself in 
 night and darkness. 
 
 The Stagyrite, when he insisted upon this rule 
 of identification, could have had no conception 
 that a writer, and of so voluminous a cast, would 
 confine himself to one revolting subject, would 
 pursue one course of disgusting composition, and 
 draw, in his characters, but one solitary picture 
 of mental baseness and deformity. He may be 
 thought rather to have calculated upon his 
 
51 
 
 dwelling on the graces of our common nature, 
 the transports of a pure love, the feelings of a 
 warm friendship, the amenities, all soft and deli- 
 cate, of a chaste, a correct, and affectionate heart. 
 The severe philosophy of Zeno we, indeed, did 
 not expect from your Lordship ; but perpetually 
 to wallow in the sty of Epicurus, and to snort 
 away the fumes of a disgusting intemperance 
 amid crimes and blasphemies, and loathsomeness 
 and misery, putting all moral feeling out of the 
 question, we might have hoped even your taste 
 and talents would have had influence sufficient to 
 have forbidden. 
 
 You have, however, I must confess, contrived 
 to give a grace to deformity. You have thrown 
 around these so reprehensible characters, certain 
 commanding energies, which usurp on the virtues 
 naturally destined to adorn purer dispositions. 
 Honour, my Lord, I will not say that you suc- 
 ceed in investing them with. It is a quality 
 made up of the prime of every thing great in 
 man, and cannot bend to fit any but characters 
 of greatness ; characters who live upon their re^ 
 putation, and who, believing that licentious man- 
 ners are compatible with no stage of society, 
 will hold no communion with those who disre- 
 gard reputation. Honour, in its chaste and Chris- 
 tian acceptation, it is, I conceive, totally out of 
 his power to draw who has never chosen a vir- 
 tuous subject for the exertion of his muse, never 
 
 d 2 
 
52 
 
 taken a virtuous mind as the model of his hero, 
 never suffered the appearance of a virtuous cha- 
 racter on the stage of his dramas without throw- 
 ing it into shade, and never permitted a wife to 
 exhibit herself as a pattern of fidelity and affec- 
 tion, where a harlot or a mistress could be found 
 to supply her place. 
 
 This sameness of character and subject will 
 ever constitute a strong ground against the 
 awarding to you the palm of distinguished ge- 
 nius. You had every reason to avoid it in jus- 
 tice to your reputation, and no one will contend 
 that you had not the power. This defect has, in 
 some measure, intailed another defect upon your 
 works. Though your execution must be allowed 
 to be spirited, you have yet not altogether avoided 
 a sort of sameness in the flow of your verse cor- 
 responding, almost unavoidably, with this iden- 
 tity of subject. And you need not be reminded 
 how dissonant with the acknowledged principles 
 of composition is that taste which gives the same 
 colouring to every part of a poem, or, the fame 
 of the writer considered, to every successive 
 poem. A dialect all Attic, all Doric, or all 
 Ionic, would, in any language, be destructive. 
 The numbers of the poet to please must be a 
 skilful combination of these varied modes of ex- 
 pression. He must mix the harsh with the deli- 
 cate, the energetic with the soft, the rude with 
 the polished, the unstudied effusions of the 
 
53 
 
 muse with the last elegancies of composition. 
 On no other terms can he hope for universal 
 acceptance. 
 
 You have also, my Lord, though in an inferior 
 degree, been inconsiderate in other respects. A 
 poet, solicitous to establish his fame with pos- 
 terity, will take care that his numbers lose no 
 part of their force from their indefiniteness. In 
 the works above alluded to, I perceive that you 
 have occasionally so expressed yourself, as to 
 leave your meaning doubtful. This is sedulously 
 to be guarded against, when we consider that 
 poetry itself, as the condensation of thought, must 
 naturally incline to obscurity ; as the vehicle of 
 strong and beautiful conception, must frequently, 
 while it administers to our pleasure, tax too 
 our understanding ; and that the language of 
 this divine art, like that of philosophy, must be 
 doomed to undergo those changes which no lan- 
 guage, ancient or modern, has entirely, perhaps, 
 escaped. Do what we will, time must run his 
 course of depredation upon all human excellen- 
 cies. New customs and manners, new religions, 
 laws, and institutions, will not only bring a 
 known vocabulary into disuse, but will introduce 
 exotic idioms, that may eventually dispossess 
 the first comers, and usurp their place. Every 
 age from Homer to Horace, and from Horace, 
 through the revival of letters, down to the pre- 
 sent time, bears witness to, and is a confirmation 
 
54 
 
 of the fact. Chaucer, to bring the matter home 
 to ourselves, is now obsolete ; and Spenser, de- 
 lighting no less by his moral than his song, is 
 yet gradually receding in his language, never a 
 happy one, from common apprehension. And 
 though we are unwilling to believe that, as ge- 
 nerations spring up and decay, they will carry 
 down with them any efficient portion of the ge- 
 nius of Shakespear or of Milton ; yet even these 
 great poets, while their thoughts remain im- 
 mortal, shall feel this universal power of change 
 in both the harmony of their numbers, and the 
 strength, and sweetness, and beauty of their 
 language. 
 
 —^—" Mortalia facta peribunt ; 
 
 Nedum sermonum stet honos et gratia vivax. 
 Multa renascentur, quae jam cecidere ; cadentque 
 Quag nunc sunt in honore vocabula; si volet usus, 
 Quern penes arbitrium est, et jus, et norma loquendi." * 
 
 Against this universal devastation of time, there 
 is not, that I am aware of, any lasting defence. 
 Those who have laboured to give an air of an- 
 tiquity to our own language, I should be sorry 
 to consider as having altogether laboured in vain. 
 The enriching it with words of a foreign idiom 
 may have done somewhat towards its endurance; 
 but we have, I fear, no ground to believe that 
 any assimilations will insure its security from 
 decay. It is, indeed, remarked by the critics, 
 
 * Hor. de Arte Poet. 68. 
 
55 
 
 that Milton in his Paradise Lost has, in the 
 choice of his words, strengthened the English 
 language. He has done so — he has made it 
 more sonorous, more magnificent, more classical. 
 But unless the standard of our vernacular idiom 
 could be fixed by an act of parliament, as Csesar 
 was persuaded by his flatterers that he could 
 give immortality to the Roman tongue, after- 
 ages will pause upon Milton's meaning, as our 
 own age is hourly starting back from the lan- 
 guage of our forefathers. Every writer, there- 
 fore, ought to be convinced, that, to make his 
 thoughts, generally speaking, intelligible, is the 
 best means he can devise for their endurance, the 
 fullest compensation for the natural instability of 
 expression. His higher conceptions may be left 
 to take care of themselves. Hardly any change 
 will affect sublimity of sentiment, which, as ages 
 roll on, will be perpetually poured out from one 
 to another, and in the existing language of the 
 present be preserved from the obsolete idioms 
 of the past. 
 
 You have also, my Lord, to my thinking, pur- 
 sued, in various parts of your works, certain well 
 known and allowed licences of poetry too far, 
 and have thus turned into defect, what, more 
 sparingly used, we have been accustomed to feel 
 as a beauty. You are, I perceive, a friend to 
 Alliteration. This play and jingle of words 1 
 have ever looked upon as the proof of a most 
 
56 
 
 faulty taste. There was a time when these things 
 were better thought o£ and when the shout of 
 admiration accompanied the armed heroes " glit- 
 tering through the gloomy glades." But that 
 effervescence has, in a good measure, subsided 
 into a calmer acquiescence with chaster models. 
 Your delight, however, is to revive these puerili- 
 ties, to regild the rattle, and put it into the hands 
 of every young Miss and Master. In the begin- 
 ning of your " Siege of Corinth," we find such 
 an alliterative display as would sicken us of any 
 poetry less captivating than your own. " Sap- 
 ping a solemn creed with solemn sneer." " To 
 warp and wield the vulgar will." " Where thou- 
 sand sleepers strew'd the strand." "By sunrise 
 must thy sinews shake." ff To smite the smiter 
 with the scimeter," &c. &c. &c. 
 
 Surely, my Lord, this is not mere negligence 
 or accident. It looks more like concealed arti- 
 fice ; a wish to outdo what you could hardly miss 
 of doing well. If, however, the thing is to be 
 considered as a sort of stealing a march upon 
 genius, which is thus made, like the clouds, to 
 " dapple into day," why, we must leave the 
 miserable expedient as we find it. These mat- 
 ters are as the poet pleases ; and if he is de- 
 lighted with tinsel and trumpery, I suppose his 
 readers must be delighted too. 
 
 Pope, your great favourite, who probably 
 contributed to lead your Lordship into this child- 
 
57 
 
 ish perversion of taste, has also exposed his less 
 skilful imitators to another danger in those ce- 
 lebrated lines, in his Essay on Criticism, (" 'tis, 
 not enough no harshness give offence," &c.) 
 which are considered as, at once, a valuable di- 
 rection and a felicitous example of the adapta- 
 tion of the sound to the sense. The cadencies 
 of both Homer and Virgil are acknowledged to 
 be as perfect as the skill of these great poets 
 could make them. They well suited the slowness 
 of their verse to the solemnity of their subject, 
 and a corresponding measure imparted life and 
 gaiety to their expressions of rapture. To this 
 end they beautifully congregated their dactyls 
 when they would paint the rapidity of an object, 
 and were as profuse in their spondees when ra- 
 pidity was out of the question. And so natural 
 and graceful were these assimilations of the lan- 
 guage with the thought, that in hardly any in- 
 stance did the effect fail of becoming commen- 
 surate with the intention. In such exhibitions 
 of their rhetorical excellence taste was delighted 
 and judgment was not offended. 
 
 But your Lordship will hardly, I fear, be 
 deemed to have rivalled either of these great 
 masters of song in this peculiar department of 
 their art. Indeed with a language like ours the 
 attempt must be next to abortive. We have 
 neither softness, nor variety enough in our rude 
 idioms to play with words and syllables as the 
 
58 
 
 ancients did, nor, in truth, is there much merit 
 to be reaped from such exhibitions were they 
 even more in our power than they are. We 
 must fix a market price upon this commodity. 
 It is worth something, but not much. Quincti- 
 lian's orator was hardly more absurdly employed 
 in catching words, and weighing and measuring 
 their meaning, than is that poet who makes these 
 fanciful imitations a serious business. For what 
 is this but to surrender the body of genius to the 
 mere scrapings of the nails.* 
 
 In " The Bride of Abydos," however, and more 
 especially, as I have observed, in " The Siege of 
 Corinth," you have indulged in this kind of 
 painting rather exuberantly. You have used all 
 sorts of words and all measures of verse to place 
 before your readers the very scene of action, 
 and to bring the peculiar doing or suffering home 
 to the heart. But you have, I think, failed to 
 endow your words with life, or to assimilate 
 your expressions with the sense they would de- 
 scribe, and have made all alike unseemly by en- 
 deavouring to force language into a perfection 
 which mere language was never intended to 
 reach. As if it were possible to go beyond na- 
 ture, or even to set art in competition with it ! 
 It is only a sottish audience that prefers the 
 mimic to the pig, that will, generally speaking, 
 
 * Quinct. lib. viii. 
 
59 
 
 confess any thing approaching to a happy rivalry 
 between them. The poet can, perhaps, less 
 succeed in making the sound, in any particular 
 instance, an echo to the sense than the musician ; 
 and music itself I have sometimes thought be- 
 comes pitiable, when it affects to give us the 
 very expression of the raptured, or agonized feel- 
 ings of the human breast. It is not to be done, 
 or only so to be done that we could wish it had 
 never been attempted. 
 
 In one instance you seem to have converted 
 this overstrained refinement into perfect ridi- 
 culousness; for you have adopted a measure of 
 verse which gives us the sound, not as an echo, 
 but rather as a direct foil to the sense. 
 
 " The Convent bells are ringing, 
 
 But mournfully and slow ; 
 In the gray square turret swinging, 
 
 With a deep sound, to and fro. 
 
 Heavily to the heart they go ! 
 Hark ! the hymn is singing — 
 
 The song for the dead below, 
 
 Or the living who shortly shall be so! 
 For a departing being's soul 
 The death-hymn peals and the hollow bells knoll : 
 He is near his mortal goal ; 
 Kneeling at the Friar's knee ; 
 Sad to hear — and piteous to see — 
 Kneeling on the bare cold ground, 
 With the block before and the guards around — 
 And the headsman with his bare arm ready, 
 That the blow may be both swift and steady, 
 
60 
 
 Feels if the axe be sharp and true— 
 
 Since he set its edge anew : 
 
 While the crowd in a speechless circle gather 
 
 To see the Son fall by the doom of the Father." * 
 
 Now, surely nothing can be more preposte- 
 rously out of nature than this jingling metre, as 
 representative of the preparations for the execu- 
 tion of Hugo. Virgil, in his description of pain 
 and suffering, has used sounds significative, in 
 the highest degree, of the subject passing before 
 the eye of the mind. 
 
 " Hinc exaudiri. gemitus, et sseva sonare 
 Verbera, turn stridor ferri, tractaeque catenae." f 
 
 But one should suppose that you were rather in- 
 tent upon rivalling his Quadrupedante putrem 
 sonitu quatit ungula campum, J or its still softer 
 original Oloi Tpwtoi nnrajL, &c.§ than in riveting 
 upon our attention a scene of such solemnity and 
 terror. 
 
 How exquisitely has Milton, in his " L' Alle- 
 gro," and " II Penseroso," brought this depart- 
 ment of the art of poetry to its perfection. How 
 the sound runs through the whole body of these 
 delightful compositions as perfect an echo to the 
 sense as language is capable of becoming ; where 
 every line breathes of the enchantments of na- 
 ture, and every word is beautifully modulated to 
 
 * Parisina. t iEneid, 1. vi. 558. 
 
 I ^Eneid, 1. viii. 596. § II. v. 222. 
 
61 
 
 the correctest expression of the feeling. But 
 your effort, my Lord, in the above adduced 
 example, is a complete burlesque upon these 
 celebrated prototypes. For here, where the 
 whole scene is a scene, not simply of suffering, 
 but of suffering surrounded by every circum- 
 stance of dread ; where silence, and sadness, 
 and the yearnings of a parent, and the horrors 
 of execution, and the ponderings upon a last 
 moment, and the fears of futurity occupy every 
 bosom, could it be believed that you have ac- 
 tually chosen a measure and expression that con- 
 verts all these solemn images into the very spirit 
 of a Bacchanalian orgie, where 
 
 " Midnight shout, and revelry, 
 Tipsy dance, and jollity," * 
 
 rule the hour and fill up the sensualities of the 
 soul ? Instances of the like defective taste occur 
 in almost every part of your poetry. 
 
 Though, however, you fail in making your song 
 moral ; in imparting a variety to your characters, 
 and, occasionally, in giving clearness to your 
 conceptions, you must yet forbear to rest in the 
 conclusion that no good is to be found amid all 
 this evil ; nothing to approve of, amid so much 
 justly to abominate. If we are not so wedded to 
 your genius as to overlook her aberrations, 
 neither are we so disgusted with her indecencies 
 
 * Milton, Comus. 
 
62 
 
 as to deny her powers. Whether with Ariosto 
 you strike your harp to themes of grandeur, and 
 open to our view a new heaven and earth of in- 
 vention ; or with Dante explore the regions of 
 other worlds, and fetch up from the realms of 
 darkness awful images and fearful objects; 
 whether you charm us with the fancy of Shakes- 
 pear, the fire of Milton, the energy and con- 
 ciseness of Dryden, or the smoothly-flowing 
 harmony of Pope, we alike confess the master 
 spirit that rules over your numbers and persuades 
 us in the moment of enchantment to cover up 
 deformity. 
 
 Mistake me not, therefore — I am no ascetic, 
 my Lord, who turns from the light of genius 
 without paying homage to its powers. I can 
 condemn the defects in these efforts of your 
 muse, and still admire the beauties which vainly 
 endeavour to atone for them. I can view, with 
 Harold, the scenery of Nature as it lies vast and 
 magnificent before me, and give myself up to its 
 sublimity, and convert my soul into its loneliness 
 and loveliness, and feel that, 
 
 " To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, 
 To slowly trace the forest's shady scenes, 
 Where things that own not man's dominion dwell, 
 And mortal foot hath ne'er, or rarely been," * 
 
 is indeed, " not solitude," but the awfulness of 
 the Deity spread around me. I can linger at 
 the pass of Thermopylae, and invoke the shades 
 
 * Childe Harold, Canto ii. 
 
63 
 
 that have immortalized its name, and gather 
 glorious sentiments from this " sepulchral" 
 record of glorious actions. I can lament over 
 the departure, from "Belgium's capital," * of 
 warriors that were never more to return to the 
 beauty they had left and fondly hoped to meet 
 again, and give a sigh to the memory, as " Ar- 
 dennes waves above them her green leaves," of 
 this "fiery mass of living valour," ere evening, 
 alas ! to be tf trodden like the grass." I can tear 
 myself from this finished picture of " the field 
 of blood," and enjoy "the hush of night "on 
 the lake Leman, and imagine myself upon its still 
 bosom, cut off from the cares of the world, and 
 awake only to the tranquillity of Nature, "breath- 
 ing a living fragrance of flowers, yet fresh with 
 childhood," *f around me. I can ascend the Alps 
 and behold where " eternity sits throned in icy 
 halls of cold sublimity," and contrast it with the 
 luxury of that departing hour of eve, when " the 
 moon is up, and yet it is not night," and when 
 
 " A single star is at her side, and reigns 
 With her o'er half the lovely Heaven." f 
 
 I can contemplate the "garden of the world" 
 spread out before me, and believe it the fairest 
 portion of the globe, the softest clime of beauty, 
 on which the Creator may look down, as he did 
 when " Heaven and Earth rose out of Chaos," 
 and still pronounce it good. 
 
 * Canto iii. + Canto iii. J Canto iv. 
 
64 
 
 " The commonwealth of Kings, the men of Rome ! 
 
 And even since, and now, fair Italy ! 
 
 Thou art the garden of the world, the home . 
 
 Of all Art yields, and Nature can decree ; 
 
 Even in thy desert, what is like to thee ? 
 
 Thy very weeds are beautiful, thy waste 
 
 More rich than other climes' fertility ; 
 
 Thy wreck a glory, and thy ruin graced 
 With an immaculate charm which cannot be defaced."* 
 
 I can sit me down by the banks of the Clitum- 
 nus, and bid the classic page unroll itself, by 
 which, though never with a pencil more just and 
 delicate than your own, its streams have been 
 consecrated and its locality denned * I can gaze on 
 the cataract of Velino, and, forgetful of its offence 
 against the strict rules of your art, can ponder 
 the description, never perhaps exceeded, till 
 I entrance myself into the same strong and awful 
 cast of feeling that pervaded the imagination of 
 the poet. 
 
 " Lo where it comes like an eternity, 
 
 As if to sweep down all things in its tract, 
 Charming the eye with dread." * — 
 
 I can view the ocean in its immensity, and ad- 
 mire the genius that describes with so much sub- 
 limeness, mixed, alas ! with so much that is re- 
 pulsive, this everlasting world of waters. 
 
 " Time writes no wrinkles on thine azure brow — 
 Such as Creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now." * 
 
 * Canto iv. 
 
65 
 
 I can pause over that " vast and wondrous 
 monument," the Coliseum, and call up unhappy 
 forms from the dust of death, and bid them tell 
 me of their departed agonies and glories.* I can 
 behold the dying Gladiator this moment, and, 
 feeling myself in the very presence of the excru- 
 ciated, noble, forsaken, expiring object, can pay 
 the highest honour to your Phidian powers of 
 expression by instinctively turning from it the 
 next.* I can enter the " eternal ark of worship," 
 and contemplating, 
 
 " All musical in its immensities ; 
 
 Rich marbles — richer painting — shrines where flame 
 
 The lamps of gold,"* 
 can "pause, and be enlightened," and confess 
 that 
 
 " there is more 
 
 In such a survey than the sating gaze 
 
 Of wonder pleased, or awe which would adore 
 
 The worship of the place." * 
 
 Surrounded by these monuments of another 
 world, I forgive the errors of an evanescent 
 creed, and exclaim with a devotion that I dare 
 not divest myself of, This is none other than the 
 house of God, and this is the gate of Heaven. In 
 your apostrophe to the " scion of Chiefs and 
 Monarchs," the " fond hope of many nations;-" \ 
 can walk with the dead, and behold where, 
 
 " in the dust, 
 
 The fair-hair'd daughter of the Isles is laid, 
 The love of millions !" * 
 
 * Canto iv. 
 E 
 
66 
 
 But when I recollect, by whom this solemn 
 dirge is sung, and that the panegyrist of the 
 daughter's virtues is no other than the assassin 
 of the parent's fame, the spirit " mixes with thin 
 air," and the enchantment is at an end ! 
 
 Such, my Lord, are among the beauties which 
 I am proud to acknowledge in the Cantos of your 
 Childe Harold ; and they might easily be in- 
 creased, did not other beauties, in your other 
 works, sway my mind with an equal attraction. 
 I confess your sweet paintings of " that land the 
 fostering nurse of civilization ; where the spirit 
 of Antiquity still seems to linger amidst its olive 
 groves, its myrtle bowers, and the precious relics 
 of its splendid edifices."* It is indeed " Greece, 
 but living Greece no more."— I look upon your 
 picture of Death as upon the face of an angel; 
 and applying the cold, beautiful description to 
 beloved objects within my own remembrance, 
 can almost impose upon myself the conviction 
 that the pure spirit has not yet fled its original 
 mansion. 
 
 " He who hath bent him o'er the dead 
 Ere the first day of death is fled, 
 The first dark day of nothingness, 
 The last of danger and distress, 
 (Before Decay's effacing fingers 
 Have swept the lines where beauty lingers,) 
 
 * Hughes's Address to the People of England in the cause 
 of the Greeks. 
 
67 
 
 And mark'd the mild angelic air, 
 The rapture of repose that 's there, 
 The fix'd yet tender traits that streak 
 The languor of the placid cheek, 
 And — but for that sad shrouded eye, 
 That fires not, wins not, weeps not now, 
 And but for that chill changeless brow, 
 Where cold Obstruction's apathy 
 Appals the gazing mourner's heart, 
 As if to him it could impart 
 The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon ; 
 Yes, but for these and these alone, 
 Some moments, ay, one treacherous hour, 
 He still might doubt the tyrant's power ; 
 So fair, so calm, so softly seal'd, 
 The first, last look by death reveal'd."* 
 
 I place myself within the solitary Hall of Hassan-) , 
 and immersed in the splendid dream of its past 
 enjoyments, its present desolation, and all the 
 raptures and sorrows associated therewith, I 
 confess the divinity of the poet that can en- 
 chant the fancy with such a picture, and with 
 such a mournfulness affect the heart %. I 
 listen to the Bulbul in the place of tombs, and 
 delight to feel the melancholy that steals upon 
 the mind from recognitions of superstition which 
 the understanding dares not countenance, and 
 which yet, in its relaxed moments, it has hardly 
 strength to disavow §. I return with the Corsair, 
 
 * The Giaour. f lb. X lb. 
 § Bride of Abydos. 
 E 2 
 
68 
 
 and joy with him in a home that he never more 
 expected to see, and weep with him over the 
 object that is to extinguish for ever his happiness 
 and his hopes ; nor consent I to pause on even 
 the beauty of those numbers which wrap my 
 heart in so overpowering a regret. 
 
 ** He turn'd not — spoke not — sunk not — fix'd his look, 
 And set the anxious frame that lately shook : 
 He gaz'd— how long we gaze despite of pain, 
 And know, but dare not own, we gaze in vain ! 
 In life itself she was so still and fair, 
 That death with gentler aspect wither'd there ; 
 And the cold flowers her colder hand contain'd, 
 In that last grasp as tenderly were strain'd 
 As if she scarcely felt, but feign'd a sleep, 
 And made it almost mockery yet to weep : 
 The long dark lashes fringed her lids of snow, 
 And veil'd— thought shrinks from all that lurk'd below— 
 Oh ! o'er the eye Death most exerts his might, 
 And hurls the spirit from her throne of light! 
 Sinks those blue orbs in that long last eclipse, 
 But spares, as yet, the charm around her lips — 
 Yet, yet they seem as they forbore to smile, 
 And wish'd repose — but only for a while ; 
 But the white shroud, and each extended tress, 
 Long — fair — but spread in utter lifelessness, 
 Which, late the sport of every summer wind, 
 Escaped the baffled wreath that strove to bind ; 
 These— and the pale pure cheek, became the bier— 
 But she is nothing — "* 
 
 I am present with Leoni at his open lattice, when 
 * The Corsair. 
 
69 
 
 " the cloudy wind which blew 
 
 From the Levant hath crept into its cave, 
 And the broad moon has brighten'd," 
 
 and look out with him on the magic city, meet- 
 ing, in its beautiful distinctness, the very 
 organ as it were of sight itself*. I wander 
 with the Renegade, and enter into his feelings, 
 and am struck by his fears when the hour of 
 midnight sets before him, in all its solemn 
 stillness, the form that is not earthly, and the 
 love that has already shrouded itself in the 
 grave f. I recognize no mean casuist in the 
 developement, full of truth and tenderness, of the 
 power of the mind to create its own happiness 
 out of the simplest materials that Providence, 
 ever merciful, casts in its way. 
 
 " Of objects all inanimate I made 
 Idols, and out of wild and lonely flowers. 
 And rocks whereby they grew, a paradise." X 
 
 I mourn over the soft, and patient, and silent 
 younger sufferer, and am present with the 
 horrors of a situation where light is denied, and 
 destruction does her work in darkness, as he 
 gradually sinks into the arms of death with 
 
 " not a word of murmur, not 
 
 A groan o'er his untimely lot."§ 
 
 I disdain not, monster as he is, to mix some 
 
 * Doge of Venice. + The Siege of Corinth. 
 
 X Lament of Tasso. § Prisoner of Chillon. 
 
70 
 
 pity for the lost and fallen Lara with my admi- 
 ration of his faithful Page, following him through 
 life, clinging to him in death, and evincing, ah, 
 so fatally ! the love of her heart in the distrac- 
 tion of her mind*. I, finally, hesitate not to 
 confess, that I bow me down and worship the 
 Genius, which, alluding to a portrait recalling 
 some face we think we have seen before, ex- 
 claims, in " syllables that breathe of the sweet 
 South," 
 
 " One of those forms which flit by us, when we 
 Are young, and fix our eyes on every face ; 
 And, oh ! the loveliness at times we see 
 In momentary gliding, the soft grace, 
 The youth, the bloom, the beauty which agree, 
 In many a nameless being we retrace, 
 Whose course and home we know not, nor shall know, 
 Like the lost Pleiad t seen no more below. "% 
 
 Yes, my Lord, with these, and with many other 
 portions of your works, I seek acquaintance with 
 the earnestness of one who desires to go to 'the 
 fairest models of Genius for the highest sources 
 of his enjoyments, nor can any detestation of 
 your deformities take away from this reverence 
 for your beauties. Here, if you are original, you 
 are immortal. 
 
 But great as you are in these exquisite de- 
 lineations of nature and of mind, you are yet not 
 
 * Lara. J Beppo. 
 
 t Qua? septem dici, sex tamen esse solent. — Ovid. 
 
71 
 
 more so than we have a right to expect, placed 
 as you were under circumstances of peculiar 
 favourableness. When you described the ruins 
 of Rome, you were on the spot. You were on 
 the spot when you electrify us with the remem- 
 brances of Greece, of the Plains of Ilium, of the 
 seat of ancient learning, and of the remains of 
 her antiquity. When, with a pencil glowing 
 with strength and softness, you painted the 
 '■' wizard streams" and romantic regions of the 
 South, you were traversing their climes, and in 
 the very midst and heart of their beauties. And 
 you need not, I am sure, be told what advantage 
 this locality, associated with the history of past 
 heroic ages, gives to a poet ; how it makes him 
 sublimer in his views and thoughts \. how his 
 soul admits .of a deeper enchantment, and his 
 muse of a loftier imagination, when on the plain 
 of Marathon he sings of the departed glories of 
 Greece, or on the banks of the Scamander of the 
 field sanctified by the battles of Gods and men. 
 The beauties of Arcadia will be found to be beau- 
 ties nowhere so fresh and faithful as in Arcadia. 
 On the spot which years and genius have con- 
 secrated, all poetical inspiration must be at its 
 height. It must be wrapped in a holy and di- 
 vine awfulness. It must possess the quick pass- 
 ing feeling of an ethereal mind, bright and beau- 
 tiful, and with the very energy about it of its 
 native Heaven. What is lovely, is never so lovely 
 
72 
 
 as at such a moment. What is great, never rises 
 to such sublimity. " I stood upon the Sym- 
 plegades. I stood by the broken altar still 
 exposed to the winds upon one of them. I 
 felt all the poetry of the situation as I repeated 
 the first lines of the Medea *," &c. My Lord, 
 you felt but as you ought to have felt; as it 
 would have been a slur upon your heart, and an 
 eternal stain upon your genius, not to have felt. 
 So entranced, even the merest clod of the valley 
 would have perceived " some rousing motions" 
 in him, and, impressed by a growing intellect, 
 have sent forth imagination upon a stronger 
 pinion and a wider range. Fancy must have 
 died to the soul indeed, if, thus situated, your 
 muse had experienced any incapacity to " gaze 
 her visions wild and feel unmixt her flame." 
 
 What philosophers call the association of ideas, 
 repugnant as it may occasionally be to the pro- 
 gress of science, is yet of prime importance to 
 the genius of poetry. It is a strange process of 
 the brain. It hangs by small threads and fila- 
 ments, and works its way through dead and sub- 
 terranean channels until it emerges, at length, 
 into perfect day. Discarding present objects, it 
 deals with " the dark backward and abysm of 
 time," and calls up from thence images of fond- 
 ness, of faithfulness, and of beauty. How we 
 
 • Letter on the Rev. W. L. Bowles's " Strictures on the 
 Life and Writings of Pope." 
 
73 
 
 come by this mysterious power, we cannot tell. 
 Some chord is struck that, like lightning, spreads 
 its vibrations through the whole soul ; and from 
 these " dim discovered tracts of mind," presently 
 rich with thought, imagination bodies forth the 
 illustrious forms, which, but for such connexion, 
 might never have awoke from their slumber, or 
 been drawn out in their greatness. 
 
 This association of our ideas is, perhaps, more 
 predominant in its enchantment, where solemnity 
 reigns over the colouring which it assumes ; and 
 I have often thought, my Lord, that, reverting 
 to this source of melancholy pleasure, our family 
 pictures are not the meanest part of our family 
 possessions. If we can steal a moment from 
 present seducements to dwell with " the years 
 beyond the flood," we shall find their contempla- 
 tion rio undelightful employment. They give us 
 back, with the images, the honours and the virtues 
 of our ancestry. We trace the line of our descent 
 from generation to generation, and, with it, the 
 illustrious deeds by which it hath been ennobled. 
 We learn what has been done by them. We feel 
 what is required of us. We are made sensible 
 how poor and worthless nobility sits upon a 
 mind that is not noble ; and how lost a character 
 is his who can be tranquil under the conscious- 
 ness, that, of all the honours he enjoys, he can 
 boast of none which he has not disgraced. 
 
 These family portraits virtue will make her 
 
74 
 
 best school ; it is vice only that forbears to value 
 them ; vice that has a heart too hard to admit of 
 any tenderness of impressions, from associations 
 of even the most endearing nature. For other- 
 wise, how fondly should we contemplate the 
 departed line of our ancestors, not the poor, 
 drooping, emaciated figures they were, probably, 
 before they sunk into the grave, but, by the 
 blessed power of painting — " sic sine vita vivere, 
 quaro suave est ! "—all elegant and beautiful as 
 in their morning of life, when happiness opened 
 upon them wherever they turned the eye of in- 
 nocence, and when it could be turned nowhere 
 without meeting the object of its search. Who 
 can look upon these hallowed memorials, and 
 not feel his heart burn within him, and not carry 
 back his thoughts from the dead forms to the 
 living actions of his forefathers — to the " sundry 
 and manifold changes of the world" — to magnifi- 
 cence decayed, grandeur obliterated, and affec- 
 tion forgotten. Yes, when all memory is de- 
 parted ; when the steps that go down to the 
 chambers of death are wearing fast away ; when 
 the first objects of our regard, are, alas! becom- 
 ing the last in our recollection, some breath of 
 Heaven, springing up we hardly know how, 
 sweetly touches a string that recovers the tender 
 tones which time had nearly obliterated. Then 
 it is that the very sight of these portraits of 
 ancient days fills us with regret. They bring 
 
75 
 
 our neglects home to us. They compel us to 
 feel the injury we have committed in suffering all 
 that once made up the pomp and pride, the joy 
 and happiness of our lives, to have so long 
 mouldered into indifference amid the lapse of 
 years and the infirmities of forgetfulness. 
 
 Strongly too doth this power of association 
 shew itself in another mournful office of the 
 mind, which, however, your Lordship has not 
 hitherto shewn yourself to be much affected by. 
 We cannot quit the sacred soil of our nativity 
 without deep regret. We cannot unimpassioned 
 even " gaze on this fair earth and sky." To 
 feelings of delicacy local attachments will ever 
 be dear. The scenes of nature which, from early 
 years, we have been accustomed to assimilate 
 with our fondest enjoyments, will become holy 
 ground the moment we are about to be torn 
 from them. How beautifully does Eve take a 
 last farewell of her garden, on the Archangel's 
 delivery of his divine commission for her de- 
 parture. 
 
 " O unexpected stroke, worse than of Death ! 
 Must I thus leave thee, Paradise ? thus leave 
 Thee, native soil ! these happy walks and shades, 
 Fit haunt of Gods ? where I had hope to spend, 
 Quiet though sad, the respite of that day 
 That must he mortal to us both. O flowers, 
 That never will in other climate grow, 
 My early visitation, and my last 
 At even, which I bred up with tender hand 
 From the first opening bud, and gave ye names ! 
 
76 
 
 Who now shall rear ye to the sun, or rank 
 Your tribes, and water from the ambrosial fount ? 
 Thee lastly, nuptial bower ! by me adorn'd 
 With what to sight or smell was sweet! from thee 
 How shall I part, and whither wander down 
 Into a lower world ; to this obscure 
 And wild? how shall we breathe in other air 
 Less pure, accustom'd to immortal fruits ?" * 
 
 Nay, so predominant is this feeling, that it actu- 
 ally takes place under circumstances where the 
 association of ideas, one should suppose, would 
 rather prevail to its rejection. Thus Philoctetes, 
 about to accompany Ulysses and Neoptolemus, by 
 a divine suggestion, to the siege of Troy, patheti- 
 cally exclaims, 
 
 Xcu^o <o fieXadpov, &c. + 
 
 How exquisitely true to nature has the poet here 
 shewn himself. Upon all that we are about to 
 leave, Time impresses a sanctity which no sense 
 of suffering is sufficient to eradicate. The cave 
 of Philoctetes — wretchedness itself — theHermsean 
 mount ; the rocks, the waves, the winds ; every 
 thing, in short, that had been mixed up with his 
 agonies and had witnessed his despair, beheld 
 for the last time, are contemplated with fondness 
 and bidden adieu to with regret. Thus does man, 
 as he looks back upon life, perceive his departing 
 prospects gradually grow into beauty, though, 
 while they were present, he could see no beauty 
 in them. A merciful ordainment this of Provi- 
 
 * Paradise Lost, Book xi. t Sophocles' Philoctetes. 
 
77 
 
 dence, that when the evil days come, and the years 
 draw nigh in which we have no pleasure, the re- 
 membrance of our past happiness shall constitute 
 our sweetest recompense for the loss of present 
 enjoyments ! Yes — even under the most afflictive 
 circumstances this ray of the Divinity doth ever- 
 more abide with us, and from very clouds and 
 darkness elicits recollections of comfort ! 
 
 And as the power of association thus connects 
 the mind with domestic incidents and attach- 
 ments, with consecrated places and consecrated 
 things, so doth it more potently work, and upon a 
 grander scale, when grander objects arise to call 
 it forth. There for the poet to be upon the spot ; 
 to have the subject before his eyes ; the very 
 images of glory and of mournfulness bound upon 
 his heart, is almost to seize upon and appropriate 
 immortality. Think for a moment, my Lord, how 
 you were situated when you drew your celebrated 
 sketches of the ruins of Rome. A mass of magni- 
 ficence was spread around you — columns, arches, 
 statues, tombs — all that the eye delights, all that 
 the heart regrets to behold. You were an isolated 
 being in the midst of a departed world whose 
 glory and greatness have overspread the earth. 
 Why, the very mausoleums must have been ready 
 to open at your " strong bidding." The heroes 
 of Rome, clad in their patriotic sternness, must 
 have almost stood before you. Amid such venera- 
 ble relics of antiquity, such breathing memorials, 
 the inspiration of the great father of poetry him- 
 
78 
 
 self must have been upon you. Your whole soul 
 must have been filled with majestic recollections. 
 For there is nothing so awful as the forms gone 
 down to the dust; nothing so beautiful as the 
 beauty mixed with its ashes ; nothing so vast a 
 subject for genius as the " giant-statue," fallen 
 from " its wide ambitious base," and only await- 
 ing the hand of time to rob it of its remaining 
 grandeur. In such a moment of enthusiasm, and 
 on such a consecrated spot, who, knowing your 
 powers, can wonder that you were enabled to 
 consecrate your song ? 
 
 These are not, my Lord, imaginary advantages 
 -^•they are great and substantial ones, and such 
 as you do yourself confess to be considerable. 
 For in your "Corsair," you offer it as your apology 
 for giving us a repetition of some beautiful but ir- 
 relevant lines, at the beginning of the third Canto, 
 that they were written on the spot. * You also 
 justly make it your boast, that your apostrophe 
 to Parnassus was composed under 4he same fa- 
 vourable circumstances, t These stanzas were 
 written in Castri (Delphos), at the foot of Par- 
 nassus, now called Aiaicvpa, Liakura."t And 
 of this fitness for the exercise of your poetical 
 powers, you seem, too, sufficiently sensible, f It 
 is one thing (say you, in a note to your third 
 Canto of Harold,) to read the Iliad at Sigaeum 
 and on the tumuli, or by the springs with Mount 
 Ida above, and the plain and rivers and Archipe- 
 
 * See Note 14. t See Note 13 to Harold, Canto i. 
 
79 
 
 lago around you ; and another to trim your taper 
 over it in a snug library — this I know." Your 
 poetry, too, is in consonance with the same con- 
 viction. 
 
 " Happier in this than mightiest bards have been, 
 Whose fate to distant homes confined their lot, 
 Shall I unmoved behold the hallow'd scene, 
 Which others rave of, though they know it not ?" * 
 
 In the possession of these magical advantages, 
 I am not, however, certain that you have made 
 the most of them. I am not certain that in some 
 instances, and those among the brightest upon your 
 record, you have not rather fallen below than 
 soared above expectation. I know the heresy of 
 such an opinion, but, though a martyr at the 
 stake, I must still persist in entertaining it. Your 
 fourth Canto of " Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," a 
 large part of which is appropriated to the descrip- 
 tion of Italy, draws a picture of the antiquities of 
 that celebrated country, and especially of the 
 ruins of Rome, in which we delight to confess 
 the hand of a master. Still you have not done 
 justice to your great subject. You have not made 
 of it what the true poet in your situation would 
 have made. You have not poured forth over the 
 grandeur of the design a commensurate execu- 
 tion. Your genius neglects to grasp the appli- 
 cation of her song. She every where, it is true, 
 presents a splendid and a correct likeness of these 
 venerable remains ; she places them in impres- 
 
 * Harold, Canto i. S. 62. 
 
sive attitudes ; she stamps on them the spirit of 
 strength and animation ; and over all she casts 
 a beauty of expression that marks them for 
 highly favoured emanations. But, alas! the soul 
 of description is wanting. Nothing is given to 
 virtue ; nothing to patriotism ; nothing to the deep 
 and awful responsibilities which man must feel 
 when he pauses on these monuments of departed 
 ambition. We stand with you indeed " 'midst the 
 chief relics of Almighty Rome," and behold a 
 moonlight scenery worthy of such a place arid of 
 such a pencil. 
 
 " The trees which grew along the broken arches 
 Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars 
 Shone through the rents of ruin ; from afar 
 The watchdog bay'd beyond the Tiber ; and 
 More near from out the Caesars' palace came 
 The owl's long cry, and, interruptedly, 
 Of distant sentinels the fitful song 
 Begun and died upon the gentle wind." * 
 
 The Palatine, the Pantheon, the Vatican, the 
 Laocoon, the Grotto of Egeria, t all swim before 
 us in airiness and majesty; are all drawn with a 
 hand that never trembles, and in colours that will 
 never fade. But where, my Lord, do we find you 
 clothing imagination with such an av/fulness as 
 the mind is prone to deal in when 
 
 " the heart runs o'er 
 
 With silent worship of the Great of old ; 
 
 The dead but sceptred Sovereigns, who still rule 
 
 Our spirits from their urns ?" I 
 
 * Manfred. f Harold, Canto iv. X Manfred. 
 
81 
 
 Where does your muse elicit from these frag- 
 ments of grandeur the design, the end, the awful 
 nature of man ? where correct the noisy and nar- 
 row ambitions of this world by sublimely point- 
 ing to that eternal weight of glory reserved for silent 
 and patient virtue in another ? 
 
 This identification of poetry with Christianity 
 you have not adventured upon. Your descrip- 
 tive beauties are indeed of a high form, but they 
 stand lone and naked, and, careless of length of 
 days, rest their poor, meagre consolation upon a 
 deciduous fame ; upon that fame which a mere 
 harmony of numbers can command that " plays 
 round the head, but comes not to the heart." 
 Even here, however, my Lord, strongly as in 
 your genius you are intrenched, a genius no less 
 powerful that has occupied the field before you, 
 has, in my opinion, more than divided the palm 
 with you. And because the subject is of no 
 common cast, and so far as your relative merits 
 are concerned, of no common importance, I must 
 be pardoned a somewhat longer digression than, 
 under other circumstances, might perhaps be 
 decorous. It may yet possibly not be a digres- 
 sion altogether in vain, if it open to your view a 
 new source of beauty ; for never having looked 
 into Milton, as you assure us*, "since you were 
 twenty," it is possible that you may hardly have 
 
 * Preface to " Cain, a Mystery." 
 
82 
 
 thought it worth while to consult the pages of 
 inferior poets at all. 
 
 Dyer was, I believe, placed in the same en- 
 viable situation with yourself, and he has not 
 disgraced it. Though he possessed powers of 
 description allowed to be of the first order, yet 
 on these he rested not his fame. He was ever 
 mindful of the moral keeping of his pieces, and 
 he suffers neither his " Fleece," nor his " Grongar 
 Hill," nor his " Ruins of Rome," to slide from 
 our perusal, without pressing some lesson of in- 
 struction upon the heart. In the latter of these 
 fine compositions, which I am now about to 
 examine, he mingles with the magic of his pencil 
 the world of soul. 
 
 " Aspice murorum moles, praruptaque saxa, 
 Obrutaque horrenti vasta theatra situ : 
 Haec sunt Roma." 
 
 A feeling so powerful was not likely to be lost 
 upon Dyer. His genius arrested it in all the 
 mournfulness of its sublimity, and has produced 
 a work that will outlast the very subject which it 
 immortalizes. 
 
 This fine poem opens upon the reader in a 
 style of graphical elegance and beauty. 
 
 " Enough of Grongar, and the shady dales 
 Of winding Towy, Merlin's fabled haunt, 
 I sung inglorious. Now the love of arts, 
 And what in metal or in stone remains 
 Of proud Antiquity, through various realms 
 
83 
 
 And various languages and ages famed, 
 Bears me remote o'er Gallia's woody bounds, 
 O'er the cloud-piercing Alps remote, beyond 
 The vale of Arno, purpled with the vine, 
 Beyond the Umbrian and Etruscan hills, 
 To Latium's wide champaign, forlorn and waste, 
 Where yellow Tiber his neglected wave 
 Mournfully rolls. Yet once again, my Muse ! 
 Yet once again, and soar a loftier flight ; 
 Lo .' the resistless theme, imperial Rome." 
 
 Such a theme might well call forth the highest 
 powers of the poet, and force meditation into a 
 partnership with Genius. Here, therefore, Dyer 
 will be found to shew himself a philosopher of 
 the most Christian and moral cast. His exor- 
 dium is solemn and appropriate. 
 
 " Fallen, fallen, a silent heap ! her heroes all 
 Sunk in their urns ; behold the pride of pomp, 
 The throne of nations, fallen ! obscured in dust ; 
 Ev'n yet majestical." 
 
 We are charmed with the first prospect that he 
 throws upon his animated canvass. It is a 
 drawing from Nature in all her majesty and me- 
 lancholy. 
 
 " Deep lies in dust the Theban obelisk 
 
 Immense along the waste" 
 
 " Globose and huge, 
 
 Gray-mouldering temples swell, and wide o'ercast 
 The solitary landscape, hills and woods, 
 And boundless wilds ; while the vine-mantled brows 
 The pendent goats unveil, regardless they 
 F 2 
 
84 
 
 Of hourly peril, though the clefted domes 
 Tremble to every wind. The pilgrim oft, 
 At dead of night, mid his oraison hears 
 Aghast the voice of Time, disparting towers, 
 Tumbling all precipitate down-dash'd, 
 Rattling around, loud thundering to the moon ; 
 While murmurs soothe each awful interval 
 Of ever falling waters; shrouded Nile, 
 Eridanus, and Tiber with his twins, 
 And palmy Euphrates : they with dropping locks 
 'Hang o'er their urns, and mournfully among 
 The plaintive-echoing ruins pour their streams." 
 
 Here every figure is distinctly seen rising into 
 existence. The painting speaks at once to the 
 eye, the ear, the heart, the understanding. It 
 fills up the whole compass of the soul of taste. 
 We can desire, we can conjecture nothing more 
 poetically conceived, more sublimely, more har- 
 moniously expressed. We are brought into a 
 captivity which we have no power of resisting ; 
 we are soothed into a mournfulness which we 
 have no disposition to wish away. It is a beau- 
 tiful picture that requires only reiterated exami- 
 nation to increase in beauty. 
 
 After listening, astonished, to the cavern'd 
 sewers, 
 
 " how they heave their rocks in vain ! 
 
 Though now incessant Time has roll'd around 
 A thousand winters o'er the changeful world, 
 And yet a thousand since." 
 
 we travel with the poet "over airy plains," by 
 
85 
 
 * crystal founts," and " vases boss'd," and 
 " vines intermingled," and " figured nymphs," 
 
 " and deep empty tombs, 
 
 And dells, and mouldering shrines, with old decay 
 Rustic and green, and wide-embowering shades, 
 Shot from the crooked clefts of nodding towers i 
 A solemn wilderness!" 
 
 we linger, with " error sweet/' amid " idols of 
 antique guise," 
 
 " Preposterous Gods 
 
 Of fear and ignorance, by the sculptor's hand 
 Hewn into form and worship'd"— 
 
 On every side we behold "■ historic urns and 
 breathing statues ;" and while we contemplate in 
 Codes, Manlius, the Fabii, the Decii, how " rose 
 the Roman state," the whole soul becomes im- 
 bued with Roman heroism and grandeur. The 
 poet, with a noble feeling, has caught the inspi- 
 ration. 
 
 " Me now, of these 
 Deep musing, high ambitious thoughts inflame 
 Greatly to serve my country, distant land. 
 And build me virtuous fame ; nor shall the dust 
 Of these fallen piles with show of sad decay 
 Avert the good resolve." 
 
 Here, my Lord, here is a glorious purpose to 
 which he turns the awfulness of his subject and 
 the numbers of his muse. This is consecrating 
 genius indeed. 
 
 The imagery of the poem will be found to be 
 
86 
 
 every where exquisite, and every where exact. 
 This is an advantage resulting from locality, 
 which usually imparts not only more poetical 
 fire, but a greater correctness of expression. Na- 
 ture, whether "wantoning, as in her prime," or 
 covered with the wrecks of art and the majestic 
 monuments of man, is never so happily pour- 
 trayed as when we have the very objects before 
 us ; and he who shall trust to his recollection for 
 the verisimilitude of his descriptions, shall find 
 even the brightest fancy and the chastest powers 
 of delineation to fail him. The picture must be 
 drawn in its glowing state, while the scenery is 
 yet before the eye, and the impression departs 
 not from the mind. The pencil will then do its 
 duty, and the subject will start forth into life 
 and originality. Correctness, indeed, is the soul 
 of descriptive poetry. It gathers its fame from 
 its circumstantiality. Wanting fidelity, it wants 
 every thing. 
 
 We shall see, my Lord, as we proceed, that 
 in this point Dyer wanted nothing; that he is 
 equally exact in his Gliconian as in his globose 
 forms ; and that, while all the sublimity of genius 
 rules in his poetry, all the correctness of the 
 painter is discoverable in his language. In ac- 
 companying him in his 
 
 " toilsome step up the proud Palatine, 
 
 Through spiry cypress groves, and towering pine, 
 Waving aloft o'er the big ruin's brows, 
 On numerous arches rear'd" — 
 
87 
 
 we are amply repaid both in the prospects that 
 offer, and in the reflections that spring from 
 them. Here we have the ruins of Rome spread 
 out, in one magnificent mass, before us : 
 
 " Rent palaces, crush'd columns, rifled moles, 
 Fanes roll'd on fanes, and tombs on buried tombs." 
 
 What a scenery for the poet and the philoso- 
 pher! We are lost in mournful recollections. 
 Our heart is with past ages ; with that dead and 
 departed world before us, where all is hushed 
 in silence and darkness ! where Ambition having 
 done her work, and Glory spun her thread, and 
 Poverty suffered her probation, 
 
 " Caesars, heroes, peasants, hermits lie 
 
 Blended in dust together !" 
 
 In such a situation of solemnity, there is no 
 calculating upon any command of feeling. We 
 are not ourselves ; we have not our reason ; we 
 are alive but to passion, to genius, and to grief. 
 
 " There is a mood 
 
 (I sing not to the vacant and the young), 
 
 There is a kindly mood of melancholy 
 
 That wings the soul, and points her to the skies : 
 
 When tribulation clothes the child of man, 
 
 When age descends with sorrow to the grave, 
 
 'Tis sweetly soothing sympathy to pain, 
 
 A gently wakening call to health and ease. 
 
 How musical ! when all devouring Time, 
 
 Here sitting on his throne of ruins hoar, 
 
 While winds and tempests sweep his various lyre, 
 
 How sweet thy diapason, Melancholy !" 
 
88 
 
 Here then, in the very spirit of sweet and 
 pensive melancholy, and in the full blaze of de- 
 scriptive beauty, here have we successively de- 
 picted the Coliseum, the Capitol, the Pantheon, 
 the Temple of Concord, the Baths of Caracalla, 
 the Tower of Nero, and every antiquity that 
 sanctifies this interesting spot. It is one vast 
 assemblage of Roman grandeur, where "ashes to 
 ashes, and dust to dust," concludes the apotheosis 
 of Roman greatness. Still, in her very ruins she 
 carries an awe, and looks the mistress of the 
 world; nor can Tully's fine remark, now that 
 Time has run his solemn progression through 
 ages, be any where more intimately applicable 
 than to the hallowed soil of his own nativity. 
 " Tanta vis admonitionis inest in locis. Et id 
 quidem in hac urbe infinitum; quacumque enim 
 ingredimur, in aliquam Historiam vestigium po- 
 nimus." * 
 
 In his description of the Temple of Concord, 
 the patriotism of the poet takes fire, and we are 
 presented with one of the finest addresses to 
 Liberty, rational, manly Liberty, that any muse, 
 ancient or modern, has to boast of. It is too 
 long to quote entire, and too (excellent to be 
 injured by less than entire quotation. But I 
 assure your Lordship it is an apostrophe of so 
 just and generous a nature ; so classically expres- 
 sive of the glorious progress; so faithfully de- 
 scriptive of the various blessings of liberty ; so 
 
 * Cic. de Fin. Lib. v. 
 
89 
 
 warmly appropriative of her clearest and noblest 
 spirit to his own beloved country, that every 
 Englishman of whatever persuasion, political or 
 religious, (that alone of the cold, dead, Satanic 
 school excepted) must revere the patriotism of 
 the man no less than they will admire the genius 
 of the poet. In one of the great public works 
 which he imputes, somewhat dubiously perhaps, 
 to her influence, he describes the Roman aque- 
 ducts in numbers rich and expressive as surely 
 ever bard employed : 
 
 " Thine, too, those musically falling founts, 
 To slake the clammy lip ; adown they fall, 
 Musical ever, while from yon blue hills, 
 Dim in the clouds, the radiant aqueducts 
 Turn their innumerable arches o'er 
 The spacious desert, brightening in the sun, 
 Proud and more proud in their august approach : 
 High o'er irriguous vales, and woods, and towns, 
 Glide the soft-whispering waters in the wind, 
 And, here united, pour their silver streams 
 Among the figured rocks, in murmuring falls, 
 Musical ever." 
 
 Much that is beautiful in this poem I have 
 quoted. Much that is equally beautiful I re- 
 luctantly omit. I say nothing of his description 
 of the Temple of Romulus and Remus : 
 
 " The conquests, glories, of the Ausonian state, 
 Wrapp'd in their secret seeds." — 
 
 Nothing of those " ancient roads," stupendous in 
 design and extent, 
 
90 
 
 " With tombs high verged, the solemn paths of Fame ! 
 
 o'er whose broad flints 
 
 Such crowds have roll'd, so many storms of war, 
 So many pomps, so many wondering realms." — 
 
 Nothing of the stately column, still beautiful in 
 decay, 
 
 " From whose low base the sculptures wind aloft, 
 And lead through various toils up the rough steep 
 Its hero to the skies." — 
 
 Nothing of " Maro's humble tenement," where 
 
 " the lofty Bard 
 
 Framed the celestial song, or social walk'd 
 With Horace and the ruler of the world." — 
 
 Nothing of the poet's animated recollections of 
 the earlier worship of his divine art, 
 
 — " Thrice glorious days, 
 
 Auspicious to the Muses ! then revered, 
 Then hallow'd was the fount, or secret shade, 
 Or open mountain, or whatever scene 
 The poet chose to tune the ennobling rhyme 
 Melodious." — 
 
 Nothing of the rise, the height, the voluptuous 
 decline and fall of this mighty Empire ; 
 ■ " so revolves the scene ; 
 
 So Time ordains, who rolls the things of pride 
 From dust again to dust !" 
 
 These are parts of this fine poem, which, to be- 
 come acquainted with, is to have an accession of 
 enchantment thrown upon the soul ; which once 
 to peruse is never to forget. 
 
91 
 
 After, finally, adverting to the triumph of the 
 Roman arms H till fame was silent of their foes ;" 
 to the fatal progress of voluptuousness and vice, 
 and the appalling approach of " the Goth and 
 Vandal, dreaded names," he thus, in a grand style 
 of majestic reflection, concludes this correct and 
 beautifully descriptive production : 
 
 " Vain end of human strength, of human skill, 
 Conquest, and triumph, and domain, and pomp, 
 And ease, and luxury ! O Luxury ! 
 Bane of elated life, of affluent states, 
 What dreary change, what ruin, is not thine ? 
 How doth thy bowl intoxicate the mind ! 
 To the soft entrance of thy rosy cave 
 How dost thou lure the fortunate and great ! 
 Dreadful attraction ! while behind thee gapes 
 The unfathomable gulf where Ashur lies 
 O'erwhelm'd, forgotten, and high-boasting Cham, 
 And Elam's haughty pomp, and beauteous Greece, 
 And the great queen of earth, imperial Rome /" 
 
 I will not, my Lord, insist upon any other com- 
 parison between you upon this occasion, than 
 what the perusal of your respective poems must 
 naturally, and in a general way, suggest to the 
 reader. Taking it altogether, no painting can be 
 finer than this of Dyer's. There is in it most of 
 the qualities that are supposed to go to the com- 
 position of beauty. There is a just distribution 
 of light and shade ; there is grace in every atti- 
 tude, expression in every lineament, animation in 
 every figure. We behold softness and delicacy 
 
92 
 
 mixed with strength and grandeur ; variety in the 
 direction of the parts, and those parts melting and 
 blending together ; an association so powerful as 
 to open one sepulchral apartment after another, 
 and a perspective so correct that the whole scene- 
 ry appears before the eye, gradually meeting and 
 gradually receding from it. This regularity of 
 ordonnance is peculiar to Dyer. No other poet 
 has, I think, so perfectly attained to it. But why 
 dwell upon these lighter graces of his art, where 
 there is so much to make us forget every grace 
 and forgive every defect ; where we are enrap- 
 tured by his genius and instructed by his virtue ; 
 where the same mind that so beautifully exhibits 
 to us the Roman greatness, so powerfully per- 
 suades us of its vanity and emptiness ; and from 
 the mausoleums of the dead, where they sleep in 
 fame and glory, points to those mansions, re- 
 served for us hereafter, where all fame is silent 
 and all glory is forgotten ! 
 
 In your scattered descriptions of Greece, you 
 have, I think, been more fortunate, nor have you 
 here, perhaps, any so pre-eminent rival as to 
 throw your abilities into shade. We cannot, 
 upon this occasion, be just to your talents with- 
 out allotting to you a large portion of admira- 
 tion ; and were I required to adduce any proof 
 that, in your happier moments, you possess those 
 powers which lighted up the genius of Homer 
 and Milton, I would turn, with a proud confi- 
 
93 
 
 dence of success, to the extract by which I am 
 about to enrich these pages. I know not that 
 the language of your country has any sweeter 
 poetry to boast of. Like the paintings of the 
 Acropolis, it is " one continued scene of ele- 
 gance and beauty," where the thoughts, clad in 
 their native grandeur, roll on in harmonious num- 
 bers, a heavenly exhibition of all that is soft and 
 heavenly in our imagination. 
 
 " And yet how lovely in thine age of woe, 
 Land of lost gods and godlike men ! art thou ! 
 Thy vales of ever-green, thy hills of snow 
 Proclaim thee Nature's varied favourite now : 
 Thy fanes, thy temples to- thy surface bow, 
 Commingling slowly with heroic earth, 
 Broke by the share of every rustic plough : 
 So perish monuments of mortal birth, 
 So perish all in turn, save well recorded Worth ; 
 
 Save where some solitary column mourns 
 Above its prostrate brethren of the cave ; 
 Save where Tritonia's airy shrine adorns 
 Colonna's cliff, and gleams along the wave ; 
 Save o'er some warrior's half-forgotten grave, 
 Where the gray stones and unmolested grass 
 Ages, but not oblivion, feebly brave, 
 While strangers only not regardless pass, 
 Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, and sigh 'Alas!' 
 
 Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild ; 
 Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields, 
 Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled, 
 And still his honied wealth Hymettus yields ; 
 
94 
 
 There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds, 
 The freeborn wanderer of thy mountain-air ; 
 Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds, 
 Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare ; 
 Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair. 
 
 Where'er we tread, 'tis haunted, holy ground ; 
 No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould, 
 But one vast realm of wonder spreads around, 
 And all the Muse's tales seem truly told, 
 Till the sense aches with gazing to behold 
 The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon : 
 Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold 
 Defies the power which crush'd thy temples gone : 
 Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares gray Marathon." * 
 
 This is, indeed, delightful ; but forget not, my 
 Lord, to whom you are indebted for the power 
 of thus delighting us. The moment you touched 
 this hallowed soil, 
 
 " Seevus ubi iEacidae telo jacet Hector, ubi ingens 
 Sarpedon : ubi tot Simois correpta sub undis 
 Scuta virum, galeasque, et fortia corpora volvit — " f 
 
 " the blind old man of Scio's rocky isle," in all his 
 hoariness of majesty, stood before you. He suf- 
 fered you not to stir a step in these consecrated 
 regions without insisting upon making up a part 
 of your very soul. It was his "immortal dreams," 
 connected with the spells of genius, that first 
 smote upon the heart, which presented you with 
 " the desert of old Priam's pride," the " sacred 
 
 * Childe Harold, Canto ii. t jEneid. Lib. i. 103. 
 
95 
 
 shore," the tombs, the ashes of departed heroes, 
 that, in the solemn richness of our moments of 
 enthusiasm, almost cease to be visionary. He 
 it was that imparted this charm to your scenery, 
 this vividness to your description, this warmth 
 to your feeling, this rapture to your heart. 
 
 " Oh ! yet — for there my steps have been ; 
 
 These feet have press'd the sacred shore, 
 These limbs that buoyant wave hath borne — 
 Minstrel! with thee to muse, to mourn, 
 
 To trace again those fields of yore, 
 Believing every hillock green 
 
 Contains no fabled hero's ashes, 
 And that around the undoubted scene 
 
 Thine own " broad Hellespont" still dashes, 
 Be long my lot ! and cold were he 
 Who there could gaze denying thee !" * 
 
 True, my Lord. Cold and dead indeed must 
 have been such a heart of unbelief at such a mo- 
 ment. What though the glorious vision was fled ; 
 the pageantry of the field no longer visible? 
 What though the towers of Ilium were dust, and 
 no sound heard from the deserted mountain? 
 Still, the "magic waste" itself remained, and 
 vestiges of ancient days, and the dead and silent 
 mass of what once were living forms, and fond 
 associations that thickened at every step, calling 
 to remembrance the mournful procession of em- 
 pires overthrown, of palaces destroyed, of faded 
 grandeur, of awful and heroic spirits mingled 
 
 * Bride of Abydos, Canto ii. 3. 
 
96 
 
 with' their parent earth, and turning it into the 
 "haunted, holy ground" of succeeding gene- 
 rations. 
 
 " Jam silvae steriles, et putres robore trunci 
 Assaraci pressere domos, et templa deorum 
 Jam lassa radice tenent ; ac tota teguntur 
 Pergama dumetis ; etiam periere ruinae. 
 Aspicit Hesiones scopulos, silvasque latentes 
 Anchisae thalamos; quo judex sederit antro; 
 Unde puer raptus ccelo ; quo vertice Nais 
 Luserit Oenone : nullum est sine nomine saxum." * 
 
 Yes, my Lord, it is to this mighty master who 
 gave these " airy beings" a " local habitation and 
 a name;" it is to him you owe so illustrious an 
 accession to your fame. You struck upon the 
 chord of his harp, "instinct with fire," and all 
 the melodies of Heaven were infused into your 
 soul. He fixed on the soil its everlasting glory; 
 he made it "one vast realm of wonder" by iden- 
 tifying it with his song ; and he has enabled you, 
 soaring on the wings of his own exalted genius, 
 to preserve its enchantments when all is gone, 
 save the memorial of such identification ! 
 
 But enough — I have already, I fear, trespassed 
 too far upon the patience of my reader, wander- 
 ing, forgetful of my more immediate subject, 
 inter fontes et flumina nota. I will quit, therefore, 
 the enchanted ground of your poetry, where the 
 fairest flowers of spring send forth their fragrance 
 
 * Luc. Pharsal. Lib. ix. 
 
97 
 
 amid deadly nightshade, rank hemlock, and all 
 the concentrated poisons of nature, and hasten 
 towards my conclusion. 
 
 The works, my Lord, which I have in this 
 Letter briefly alluded to, include, I believe, most 
 of the earlier and better efforts of your muse. 
 "Childe Harold," the " Giaour," the " Bride of 
 Abydos," the " Corsair," and " Lara," are the 
 productions, probably, upon which your future 
 fame is destined to settle itself. If you can hope 
 for immortality, these are the masterpieces of 
 your genius that must give it. You have favour- 
 ed the world with nothing since, much as you 
 have written, that does not fall below them in 
 poetry, and below scorn and shame in every 
 thing except poetry. 
 
 And here, by the way, I cannot but admire 
 that, with a sufficiency of poetical pride about 
 you, you should consent to become so volumi- 
 nous an author. Rapidity of composition is 
 sometimes forced upon us, yet it rarely insures 
 fame. Virgil gave to the world a perfect work 
 in his Georgics ; but his Georgics were not the 
 product of a day. Buffon, it is said, wrote his 
 " Etudes," &c. many times over. He did not 
 think he consulted his reputation, or discharged 
 his duty to posterity, before, he had taxed his 
 judgment severely in what he was to leave be- 
 hind him for their instruction. There is indeed 
 no work of immortality that must not be labour- 
 
98 
 
 ed into immortality. It is not given to even the 
 
 most exalted mind to send forth, at once a hasty 
 
 and an enduring composition. 
 
 ". Vos, O 
 
 Pompilius sanguis, carmen reprehendite, quod non 
 Multa dies et multa litura coercuit, atque 
 Praefectum decies non castigavit ad unguem."* 
 
 The advice is just. The poem that is written 
 " currente calamo" and thrown out hot from the 
 forge, will insure neither fame nor respect. It is 
 therefore only reasonable to believe that the 
 pictures of Zeuxis will outlive those of Agathar- 
 chus ; """ for such works as are hastily performed 
 have rarely a permanent strength or consummate 
 beauty. But labour is a kind of loan to Time, 
 which is repaid by the durableness of that which 
 it produces! ;" and though Phidias indeed exe- 
 cuted his works with a rapidity singularly asto- 
 nishing, yet must this rather be considered as a 
 glorious exception to, than as a fixed rule for the 
 general exertions of genius and of skill. 
 
 If, in the foregoing remarks, I have not egre- 
 giously failed in a correct estimate of their 
 subjects, their characters, their sentiments, and 
 their tendency, you will be found to have com- 
 mitted abundant offence against all that is sacred 
 and useful ; and, in this your least objectionable 
 form, to have stood forth no mean corrupter of 
 society. For from even this imperfect review of 
 
 * Hor. de Art. Poet. 1. 290. 
 t Plutarch's Life of Pericles. 
 
99 
 
 the long list of your labours, it evidently, I think, 
 appears, that you were possessed of a sufficient 
 aptitude to produce such nuisances in the poeti- 
 cal world as you have since exhibited, and that, 
 from the very infant aspirations of your muse, 
 she has been growing up to the frightful stature 
 of her present deformity. In these productions 
 of your genius, without going into still darker 
 exertions of it, we may track the heart in all its 
 aberrations from virtue and all its progressions 
 towards vice ; from the first dawn of immodesty 
 to the last ramifications of licentiousness ; from 
 that . feebleness of mental reservation by which 
 man hopes to extenuate offence, to the full-blown 
 guilt of criminality where conscience becomes 
 hardened, and hopes and fears are alike con- 
 signed to oblivion. 
 
 That in these poems there is enough of energy, 
 is certain, and often enough of intense interest : 
 nor must it be denied that we see in them much 
 of that sublimity which the mind admires ; much 
 of that powerful condensation of thought, of that 
 variety of imagery, of that grace and elegance of 
 diction, which have ever charmed and delighted 
 mankind. All with you is nervous, and every 
 chord you touch full of fire and beauty. But 
 yet, I know not where we shall find so large a 
 body of poetry with so little of a didactic nature 
 about it ; so little of any of those instructive 
 tendencies which the highest efforts of this 
 
 g 2 
 
100 
 
 divine art are evermore fain to exhibit. Of 
 nearly the whole series of these poems it may be 
 observed, that they delight the fancy without 
 enlarging the mind ; that they teach nothing by 
 which man may be made either wiser or better ; 
 that their tendency is less to instruct the under- 
 standing than to unsettle and debase the heart ; 
 and that where virtue forsakes the man, it is 
 rather a glaring than a hallowed genius that con- 
 tinues faithful to the poet. 
 
 Addison taught to Akenside the art of Philo- 
 sophical Poetry; and Akenside, in his "Plea- 
 sures of Imagination," has surpassed his master, 
 and given to the world a production which will 
 live so long as sound reason and sublime imagery 
 find a place in the human mind. There is in this 
 poem a solidity that recommends it to the scho- 
 lar, and an elegance that attracts to its perusal 
 the general reader. We here meet with " thoughts 
 that breathe and words that burn ;" but it is a 
 holy warmth, a pure energy, in which they invest 
 their subject ; not a lascivious fire that scorches, 
 and blackens and blasts wherever it spreads. 
 
 -" Guide my way 
 
 Through fair Lyceum's walk, the green retreats 
 Of Academus, and the thymy vale 
 Where oft, enchanted with Socratic sounds, 
 Ilissus pure devolved his tuneful stream 
 In gentler murmurs*." 
 
 * Pleasures of Imagination, Book i. 1. 590. 
 
101 
 
 Yes — wisdom and virtue were the objects of his 
 choice. His muse disdained to wander over 
 those forbidden fields of fancy where Religion and 
 Morality are insulted at every step, and where 
 Science, if she be accidentally met, is little re- 
 garded and speedily dismissed. 
 
 For works like your Lordship's, delinquent in 
 their story and their personages, it is difficult to 
 frame any apology that will not take the shape 
 of condemnation. It is quite impossible to do 
 so, if these works are thrown loose upon the 
 world with no care to counteract the pernicious- 
 ness of evil sentiment by the introduction of 
 moral correctives. In your preface, indeed, to 
 Childe Harold you make some faint pretensions 
 of this sort. Adverting to your hero, you ob- 
 serve, "he never was intended as an example, 
 further than to show that early perversion of 
 mind and morals leads to satiety of past 
 pleasures and disappointment in new ones, and 
 that even the beauties of Nature, and the stimu- 
 lus of travel (except ambition, the most power- 
 ful of all excitements) are lost on a soul so con- 
 stituted, or rather misdirected." But in your 
 capacity of a poet, where, let me ask, have you 
 ever attempted to check these ?« misdirections of 
 his soul f " or to remove the evil of this " early 
 perversion of mind and morals ?" Perhaps, like 
 the A0IA02 of Antiquity, you may, for the ease 
 of conscience, be disposed to lay all impurity of 
 
102 
 
 subject at the door of Jupiter, who was sup- 
 posed, you know, to have the impulses and in- 
 spirations of the muse in his keeping ; or, with 
 the wily Grecian*, may be inclined to believe, 
 that success sanctifies any means by which it is 
 attained, and that that poetry which " yields 
 just half-a-crown a line" can have little cause to 
 be alarmed at any imputations of indecorum. 
 
 Seriously, my Lord, this systematic neglect of 
 any thing in the shape of a moral is always to be 
 dreaded. It fixes the mind upon human opera- 
 tion only ; upon the overpowering incidents, the 
 external manners and management of the piece. 
 It doth not shew any operation of Providence 
 upon passing events. It leaves God out of the 
 world, and, precisely under circumstances where 
 an awful retribution is called for, no retribution 
 is beheld. The villain triumphing in his guilt, 
 dies, and, for any thing offered by the poet to the 
 contrary, drops into annihilation. The sufferer 
 also expires, and sinks into the same oblivious 
 grave. Fortunately, however, the mind is not so 
 constituted, or so lost to its original dignity, as 
 lastingly to admire what it cannot honestly ap- 
 prove. Our very taste seems to become gradu- 
 ally hardened against productions beautiful with- 
 out utility, and sublime without devotion. We 
 regard that poem with an unsteady affection, 
 
 * Ulysses. 
 
303 
 
 which is written only to delight, and which de- 
 lights only to debase. We cannot give the heart 
 to such an effort of genius. We peruse, admire, 
 and abhor it. 
 
 The poetical offspring of a rival genius, you 
 once, I think, termed " a mighty mixture of the 
 great and base." * This was, I presume, before 
 you sufficiently knew either Sir Walter Scott or 
 yourself; before you could have duly appreciated 
 the tendency of his poetry, or suspected the 
 future worthlessness of your own. For what, 
 suffer me to ask, is the composition of the whole 
 precious posse of heroes you have since that 
 time brought upon the public stage 1 To say that 
 they are fit for the gallows, is to send them away 
 with but half their claims. They are fit for the 
 inhabitance of your own Hades ; for such demo- 
 niac feelings as your Lordship's imagination has, 
 and as I verily believe, for the credit of human 
 nature as well as of divine poesy,no other imagina- 
 tion saveyour Lordship's, could have invested them 
 with. The deformed images, reversing the rules 
 of the optician, we must, instead of pinnacling 
 on high, place full and close before us. We shall 
 then behold, in these hitherto worshipped gods 
 of our idolatry, the gaping mouth, the shrinking 
 nostril, the distended feature, and the hideous 
 form ; and thus reduced to the level of their abo- 
 
 * English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. 
 
104 
 
 mination, we shall cease to wonder that many a 
 modern Alcmenes will be found to bear away 
 the palm from the Minerva of Phidias. 
 
 Still that your poetry, my Lord, has been read ; 
 that it has even greedily been sought after ; nay, 
 that with a frenzied predilection, it has taken 
 place of what the best of ancient or modern 
 times has produced, the melancholy fact will 
 hardly, I fear, permit us to doubt. To what 
 combination of causes to attribute this, we hardly 
 know. Some, however, offer themselves. Few 
 perhaps minutely examine the tendency where 
 they admire the execution of a work. What is 
 beautiful in description, or sweet in numbers, or 
 soothing in sentiment, or provocative of passion, 
 is not often, by careless or indifferent readers, re- 
 jected for any defect in morals. To be enter- 
 tained is frequently the sole object with such 
 minds, and, where that entertainment is of a 
 novel cast and exquisite in its kind, it finds an 
 easy reception, and often an enthusiastic wel- 
 come. No one has been more indebted than 
 your Lordship to the fascinations of the Muse for 
 the concealment of her perversions. It has 
 brought many an unthinking mind into bondage, 
 and increased the number of your friends, even 
 among those whose attachment to good morals 
 has never been disputed. But had you stood 
 upon the solid fame, the decorous sentiments, 
 the useful tendency, the sublime originality of 
 
105 
 
 your writings, you might have largely fallen 
 short of your present fulness; no satiety of 
 either reputation or emolument might have await- 
 ed your labours, nor would you, and those em- 
 barked in the same crusade, so long have fattened 
 on the follies of your fellow-creatures. 
 
 We may distinguish another cause for the en- 
 thusiastic entertainment of your works, in the 
 peculiar nature of the times in which they are 
 produced. There have been periods of society, 
 I am inclined to hope, in this country, when the 
 poetry of Lord Byron would not have been so 
 warmly countenanced, nor its perpetual viola- 
 tions of established notions, in morals and re- 
 ligion, so patiently endured. But with much 
 virtue and many excellencies, the present must, 
 perhaps, be considered as an age that may be 
 said to flourish in the midst of excitements, and to 
 breathe in an atmosphere that would have nearly 
 suffocated former generations. It requires for its 
 nourishment the most delicious and high-seasoned 
 viands. The rarities of sea and land must be set 
 before it ; nor can any thing please its palled and 
 debauched appetite but what luxuriates and ener- 
 vates, maddens and destroys. This is the cha- 
 racter of that host of readers which the progress 
 of an unsound knowledge has poured forth upon 
 society. These mere " tasters of the Pierian 
 spring;" these half-philosophers and half-infidels 
 who aspire to a literature at once cheap and 
 
106 
 
 worthless, are found greedily to devour produc- 
 tions that pander for their infirmities and extenu- 
 ate their crimes. With them, Harold is a hero 
 as pious as iEneas, and Juan a personage as saga- 
 cious as Ulysses, and, in his adventures, a great 
 deal more entertaining. We are not, therefore, 
 to wonder that by this part of the community, 
 (and it is daily increasing) your poetry should be 
 congenially appreciated, and applauded to " the 
 very echo." ft is a corrosive indeed that they 
 seem to be perfectly indifferent about the fatality 
 of. They purchase it with avidity, swallow it 
 down, become convulsed, turn black and die. 
 
 The estimation in which your works have been 
 held in this country is, I think, further imputa- 
 ble, and that in no mean degree, to the praise 
 that has been lavished upon them by those who, 
 undertaking the charge of our national literature, 
 ought also to be the guardians of our national 
 morals. It is unfortunate, my Lord, for the soil 
 of your nativity, as well as for your own fame, 
 that your poetry has hitherto received far less 
 steady reprehension than it has deserved. They 
 who in its earlier stages should have exposed its 
 criminality, have rather chosen, from what mo- 
 tive it is difficult to determine, to display and 
 recommend its beauties. Herein they have im- 
 peached alike their judgment and their duty. 
 They have suffered the Religion of their Country 
 to be ridiculed, its institutions to be disparaged, 
 
107 
 
 and its morality insulted, when the weapons of 
 severe retaliation were in their power, and when, 
 by a resolute lifting up of their voices against 
 such authors and their productions, they might 
 have gone far towards discountenancing the pub- 
 lic perusal and encouragement of them. For as 
 physicians justly prefer the prophylactic to the 
 therapeutic branch of their profession, so will it 
 ever be better to crush immorality in its infancy 
 and first branchings out into vice. But this they 
 have not done. On the contrary, they have per- 
 mitted the torrent, with little serious opposition 
 until of late, to take its course, and have thus 
 sacrificed the virtue they either saw not the 
 danger, or cared not, or feared to undertake the 
 defence of. 
 
 At such a procedure in certain of our periodi- 
 cal criticisms we can feel no surprise. But we 
 are both astonished and grieved when the best 
 friends of our religion and laws ; when they who 
 have ever proved themselves the advocates of 
 the solid virtues of the Empire, are yet among 
 the number of those who incautiously betray her 
 interest and " wound her rest." It has been re- 
 marked by certain of your admirers — who have 
 ever been quite as complaisant to the muse of 
 Lord Byron as their own powerful talents and 
 a regard for public morality required— that you 
 are the only poet, Cowper alone excepted, that 
 has drawn your own portrait, and mixed your- 
 
108 
 
 self up with the unfading verdure of your works.* 
 And for this gracious bending of a mind so mag- 
 nificent to public curiosity, they seem inclined 
 to shew as much gratitude, to the full, as the 
 especial favour deserves. A very little reflec- 
 tion, however, will evince the disparity between 
 the two instances of peculiar condescension here 
 referred to. 
 
 The charm which attaches us to Cowper, we 
 find, I think, no resemblance of in your Lordship. 
 Indeed the very foundation of our approval of 
 his mixing himself with his poetry, is a reason 
 for condemning the like identification in your- 
 self. It is his kind and overflowing benevolence ; 
 the tender and domestic turn of his mind, con- 
 necting itself with domestic enjoyments, with 
 the happiness of the brute creation, with sweet 
 retired scenery, with frequent moral reflection, 
 with all that man believes to be virtuous and 
 feels to be grateful, that make us pleased to see 
 him in every successive page of his works. He 
 joins us on the road only to heighten the relish of 
 our prospects, and to increase the gratification 
 of our pleasure. As we journey on together, we 
 become better acquainted, and uneasy at the 
 thoughts of separation. He has no reserves, no 
 concealments. He shews us his heart, its errors 
 and its goodness, and its goodness extenuating, 
 and nearly cancelling its errors. 
 
 But your Lordship's self- exhibitions are of an 
 
 * See the Quarterly Review, No. 37, for April 1818. 
 
109 
 
 entirely different cast. You, it is true, like Cow- 
 per, expose to us your heart. But, alas ! what 
 a heart! filled alone with one overwhelming pas- 
 sion ; with a pride, as insolent as it is weak, 
 scorning all established notions ; all that time has 
 sanctified; all that experience has stamped with 
 utility ; all that profound and collective wisdom 
 has pronounced venerable ; treating with a nar- 
 row and unmanly contempt his contemporaries, 
 his place of education, his country, his very 
 kind ; and delivering over to a low and coarse 
 derision every person and object around him, 
 which, save in his own perverted judgment, are 
 considered as deserving of respect. Wherever 
 Cowper appears upon the stage of his works, he 
 brings with him virtuous feelings and a proper 
 resentment of feelings that are not virtuous. 
 Wherever your Lordship is pleased to figure 
 among your heroes and to amalgamate the soul 
 of your own sentiments with theirs, virtuous 
 feelings are a dead lumber presently swept be- 
 hind the scenes. He evermore introduces us 
 into good company ; you into company that we 
 are glad to get rid of as speedily as we can. He 
 joins virtue with genius, and by the instruction 
 of the one increases the enchantment of the other; 
 you disdainfully dissolve the connexion, and 
 leave your genius naked and exposed. All the 
 grounds of comparison between you will, in 
 fact, be found to be violated, and Cowper must, 
 by intermixing himself up with his poetry as 
 
110 
 
 " an actual living man expressing his own senti- 
 ments, thoughts, hopes, and fears,"* continue 
 to delight, while the same conduct on your part, 
 " covered by no very thick disguise," * must ine- 
 vitably disgust. Though, therefore, Cowper may 
 be, in your estimation, " no poet;" though you 
 may have " tried to read his version of Homer, 
 and found it impossible,"t yet, whatever be the 
 defects of that translation, his great and original 
 work, in spite of the occasional severity which 
 we could sometimes wish he had softened, will 
 be considered, probably, as giving a flat con- 
 tradiction to your assertion. " The Task" is no 
 evanescent labour. It will live — and to the con- 
 genial feelings and just admiration of posterity 
 will endear the genius of Cowper, when Harold 
 for his pride, Cain for his blasphemy, and Juan 
 for his licentiousness, shall have scathed the lau- 
 rels of Lord Byron, and consigned his poetry to 
 an early and a loathed grave. 
 
 There are pauses in all human praise and cen- 
 sure; but the " modesty of nature" is, I think, 
 quite overstepped with your reviewer, in his in- 
 sinuating introduction to the fourth Canto of 
 Childe Harold. For what is there in your reli- 
 gious notions to induce any wish in the reader 
 for their communication ? what in your political 
 principles, abhorrent alike to all parties? what 
 in your moral feelings and your sense of de- 
 
 * Quarterly Review, ib. 
 
 t Letter to Rev. W. L. Bowles. 
 
Ill 
 
 eorum, both measured upon a scale that even 
 the coarsest minds would hesitate to adopt? 
 what in such " reflections and opinions, loves 
 and hates, raptures and sorrows,"* as you are 
 pleased to entertain us with ? Truly the public 
 can feel but little " pride on being called into 
 familiarity with a mind so powerful," # when 
 that mind, in the doctrines which it promulgates, 
 the symptoms which it exhibits, and the feelings 
 which it elicits, is so lamentably depraved. We 
 spurn the invitation " to witness and partake of 
 its deep emotions," * when we must be content 
 to pay for our entertainment by hearing the 
 strongest reflections cast upon the brighest vir- 
 tues, and the most prophane attacks made upon 
 the most sacred subjects. The "• noble pilgrim" 
 may rest assured, that, with such " expositions 
 of the sanctity of his bosom,''* neither the pre- 
 sent, nor any future generation will be " struck 
 with awe." Struck indeed they must be, and 
 most deeply and most sorrowfully ; but awful 
 feelings are only communicated through virtuous 
 instrumentality. 
 
 To be sure, the " Teian paradise of lutes 
 and maidens " * was over, — the " banquet had 
 ceased,"* — the " emptied wine-cup lay on the 
 ground," * — the ' ' withered garland was flung aside 
 and trodden underfoot."* In other and plain terms, 
 Childe Harold, with the " Carpe diem" bound upon 
 his brow, and, in spite of the glozing divination 
 
 * Quarterly Review, ib. 
 
112 
 
 of his oracle " Balnea, vina, Venus," &c. com- 
 pletely surfeited with sensual indulgence, had 
 " spurned from him the implements of former 
 luxury."* And in this beastly, Egyptian state 
 of mind, the reader, introduced to " the stern 
 pilgrim, stalking from desolation to desolation," * 
 is to imagine himself, forsooth, " as in the pre- 
 sence of a superior Being."* Really this is too 
 much. To be thus invited to fall down and 
 worship the Divinity of Lampsacus, is all too 
 much. It is a refinement upon the very witche- 
 ries of Juan itself, that enchanting Siren whose 
 " song is death and makes destruction please." 
 Positively, we know not whether morality is 
 meant to stand on its head or its heels. " Videbar 
 mihi videre alios intrantes, alios autem exeuntes, 
 partim ex vino vacillantes, partim hesterna pota- 
 tione oscitantes. Versabatur inter hos Gallius 
 unguentis oblitus, jedimitus coronis. Humus 
 erat immunda, lutulenta vino, coronis langui- 
 dulis, et spinis cooperta piscium.t" Is the 
 great orator here giving us the picture of a de- 
 bauch, or is it merely his proem to some literary 
 disquisition? Yours, my Lord, is a most fortu- 
 nate Muse. She can get absolution without 
 going to Rome for it; nor can we any longer 
 wonder that, with all her blots, she shines with 
 such refulgence, when the very apostles of ortho- 
 doxy are proud to kalendar her virtues, and, 
 
 * Quarterly Review, ib. 
 
 f Vide Quint. Orat. Lib. viii. cap. Hi. 
 
113 
 
 with Ovidian rites, to employ themselves in her 
 canonization. 
 
 Nor is a later review of your productions, 
 when years ought to have furnished a wiser ex- 
 perience, of a less erroneous or injurious cast. 
 For herein they not only boast of the encourage- 
 ment which they formerly bestowed, declaring 
 themselves with an evident complacency, of 
 these " earlier fruits the first and warmest eulo- 
 gists,"* but even proceed to offer fresh incense 
 upon the unhallowed altar. They scruple not to 
 speak of certain of your dramas in the highest 
 terms as poetical compositions, and censure is 
 invariably softened by some subtle and refined 
 compliment to talent. To me, indeed, they ap- 
 pear to applaud with a sort of nervousness run- 
 ning through their whole frame; and, conscious 
 that their critique will be served up « Jovis 
 auribus," to flatter and to palpitate in the same 
 breath. They descant little upon your Lordship's 
 impieties; little upon your immoralities, in both 
 of which these dramas confessedly abound, and 
 are perfectly mute on the subject of your alleged 
 plagiarisms: but studiously seeking matter of 
 commendation, studiously avoiding matter -of 
 censure, they meet not the crying evil of your 
 works as a plain, honest, English-hearted journal 
 that goes straightforward with its criticisms and 
 cares less about elegance of composition than 
 
 * See Quarterly Review, July 1822, No. 54, 
 
 H 
 
114 
 
 rectitude of thought, ought to meet it. Their 
 duty is before them, but their duty is forgotten. 
 
 The reason which these gentlemen affect to 
 give for their long silence towards your Lord- 
 ship's faults, is, in my mind, as impotent as the 
 works they have neglected to chastise are perni- 
 cious. Their real motives for the lenity of their 
 conduct are best known to themselves ; but they 
 have cherished the snake that has since stung 
 society into madness. They have lauded into 
 notoriety, and must have a portion of the merit 
 of affiliating themselves with, " the systematic 
 and increasing prostitution of those splendid 
 talents," which they are now, at length,- " con- 
 strained to regard with abhorrence."* But why, 
 then, encourage the perusal of such works ? Why 
 send the young mind for its first nourishment to 
 food, that, when digested, will turn to poison? 
 Why speak of poetry that ought never to defile 
 the purity of innocence and virtue, in such a 
 manner as to render it almost impossible for 
 virtue and innocence to abstain from its perusal? 
 This might be pardonable in critics who confess 
 they can see no serious faults in your Lordship's 
 poetry, save a few errors of taste ; and who are 
 willing to impose upon themselves the belief that 
 even the moral tendency of your writings is suffi- 
 ciently perceptible. But it is seriously to be 
 lamented, that a journal so distinguished, and so 
 
 * Quarterly Review, ib. 
 
115 
 
 able in its general disquisitions, should unhap- 
 pily, on this important point, join issue with the 
 adversaries of our faith ; and especially where, 
 speaking of the province of criticism, they prove 
 to us their competency correctly to draw the 
 line of critical duty. « It should watch over the 
 correctness of language, metre, imagery, meta- 
 phor, the appropriateness of all these both to the 
 character of the whole, and to the particular part 
 under examination. This is one class of its 
 duties; another, though less strictly so, is to 
 observe upon the positive richness and variety 
 of these ingredients, the force and glow of the 
 language, the harmony and changing cadence of 
 the versification, the perfection and grouping of 
 the imagery, the number and vividness of the 
 metaphors. Rising still higher, but still within 
 the same limits, its duty is to consider the choice 
 of the subject in many different points of view, 
 the relation of the parts to each other, the unity 
 of the whole : the conception, the sustainment, 
 the contrast of the personages, the purity of the 
 thoughts and the general moral effect of the 
 poem."* O that they could be made to recol- 
 lect certain energetic reflections, on the com- 
 parison between " the manly indignation" of 
 Whitaker, and the " courtly baseness" of Whar- 
 ton, towards the historian of the " Decline and 
 Fall of the Roman Empire." f But the mind that 
 
 * Quarterly Rev. No. 38, Art. iii. f lb. No 24 ; Art. iii. 
 
 H 2 
 
116 
 
 commits itself does not willingly fall back upon 
 its own indiscretion. 
 
 Such critiques, however they may be admired 
 for their taste or literature, are not what we want 
 in the present instance and at the present period. 
 Fine writing, nice discernment of propriety, ac- 
 curate delineation of plot and character, recon- 
 dite inquiries into dramatic canons, and com- 
 ments on things in themselves comparatively 
 immaterial; these, in their proper place and 
 time, are, I allow, prime and expected excellen- 
 cies. But in a review of your Lordship's poeti- 
 cal labours, we look for something of a more 
 generous and fearless nature ; for a courage that 
 shall at once pluck the lion by the beard ; for 
 that stern and awful rebuke fitted to the inso- 
 lence and infidelity which it chastises. We 
 must not have every thing made to offend cast 
 into shade; every thing calculated to seduce 
 neglected to be held up to reproach. It is an 
 insult to the public to let unblushing depravities 
 of composition pass harmless, while flowers are 
 sedulously strewn along the path, which, clad 
 in its court vest, Censure is about to tread on 
 tiptoe. What! because, against all hope, these 
 literary syndics trusted that you would " ere 
 long discover that wickedness was not strength, 
 nor impiety courage, nor licentiousness warm- 
 heartedness, nor an aversion to your own country 
 philosophy,"* was that a reason for " altogether 
 
 * Quarterly Review, ib. 
 
117 
 
 abstaining" from the notice of your polluted 
 works ? Because they conjectured that " riper 
 years, and a longer experience, and a deeper 
 knowledge of his own heart, and a more familiar 
 acquaintance with that affliction to which all are 
 heirs, and those religious principles by which 
 affliction is turned into a blessing, would render 
 him not only almost, but altogether such a poet 
 as virgins might read, and Christians praise, 
 and Englishmen take pride in," * was this 
 an apology for withholding the severity of cri- 
 ticism, when they found that that poetry was, 
 on the contrary, of a nature which no virgin could 
 peruse, no Christian commend, no Englishman, 
 with any feelings of honour or patriotism about 
 him, regard but as a national nuisance and dis- 
 grace? Did Demosthenes so temporize, when 
 he poured forth his thunders against the ambition 
 of Philip ; or Tully, when, in the terrors of his 
 eloquence, he denounced the treasons of Cati- 
 line; or Paul, when " he reasoned of righteous- 
 ness, temperance, and judgement to come,' 1 and 
 in the very plenitude of his authority and his 
 crimes made " Felix tremble ?" — My Lord, you 
 have escaped breaking upon the wheel. The 
 hands are feeble, the hearts are faint that could 
 most powerfully have chastised you into virtue, 
 or that, failing therein, could more powerfully 
 have exposed you to scorn. 
 
 Suffer me, however, once for all to observe, in 
 
 * Quarterly Review, ib. 
 
118 
 
 opposition to these courteous criticisms, come they 
 from what quarter and be they influenced by what 
 motives they may, that, whatever are your powers, 
 to your Country they have been of but little 
 service; whatever your principles, no page of any 
 of your writings has contributed to the security, 
 or to the adornment of virtue. For have you not, 
 in these writings, offended against decency and 
 repudiated shame ? Have you not, with an open 
 disregard to the comfort and dignity of domestic 
 life, represented almost every woman as a harlot, 
 and every harlot as the preferred companion and 
 friend of man ? How then can we believe that 
 your poems should be constantly read and should 
 be never injurious ; that youth should feed upon 
 their numbers and imbibe no stain from their 
 sentiments; that they should repose on these 
 Idalian couches and not feel the serpent's tooth 
 amid their flowers and their fragrance ? It is 
 morally impossible, that the mind which sits 
 down pure to the perusal of such offensive pages 
 should rise from it with the like purity. 
 
 How your fame will stand with posterity, it 
 is vain to enquire, and would be idle to speculate 
 upon. It is not improbable that something* like 
 the doubt which crossed the mind of the Senate, 
 whether they should pronounce their deceased 
 Emperor a tyrant or a God,* will perplex the 
 judgment of succeeding generations as to the 
 credit and character of your poetry. They will 
 
 * Tiberius. Gibbon. 
 
119 
 
 hardly know if they shall deify or desecrate a 
 genius so majestic, degrading itself by subjects 
 and sentiments so repulsive. Plutarch, in his 
 introduction to the life of Pericles, observes, 
 " The mind has a power of choice, and can turn its 
 attention to whatever objects it pleases. It ought, 
 therefore, to employ itself in the best pursuits, 
 not merely for the sake of contemplating what is 
 good, but that it may be nourished and enriched 
 by the contemplation. For as those gay and 
 vivid colours which strengthen and clear the 
 sight, are more grateful to the eye; so those 
 objects of contemplation are to be chosen, which 
 while they delight, at the same time direct 
 the mind to the proper happiness of its nature. 
 Such are the works of Virtue." How just and 
 beautiful, but, with you, how despised and 
 neglected these reflections. Your productions 
 have had a powerful effect upon society, and 
 you know it, and in this consciousness you 
 intrench yourself. You know that, with an in- 
 sane partiality, we are undervaluing our standard 
 writers and placing licentious drivellers in their 
 room. This partiality has been of late greatly 
 extending itself. The Shakespears and Miltons 
 of better days are superseded by the Byrons and 
 Shelleys, the Hunts and Mooresof our own. But 
 let us hope the infatuation is at its height, and 
 that the garbage which the present generation 
 luxuriates upon, posterity will nauseate and cast 
 upon the dunghill. We shall then, my Lord, 
 
120 
 
 look for the record of your achievements to other 
 monuments than the marble of Ancyra. We shall 
 seek it, as you inform us they now cautiously ap- 
 proach the pillar of De Foix,* where, whatever 
 be the inscriptions that illustrate and adorn 
 its body — turpe et miserabile I—" weeds and 
 odour rankle round the base. " 
 
 Nay, I do not altogether despair of a reform in 
 the public taste, even in our own times, and that 
 we shall return to a sounder judgment upon our 
 adoption of a purer morality. When we serious- 
 ly consider the cruel usage religion and decency 
 have long been receiving at the hands of the 
 poetical infidels of the day, we shall interdict 
 the writings that go on butchering all before them 
 of worth and virtue, of delicacy and decorum. 
 We shall hold in our fixed disdain the wretches 
 who infamously cut up the strong foundations of 
 society, and who pride themselves in the facility 
 with which they can inflict their bitter wounds. 
 We shall anathematize these lawless revilers of 
 virtue in proportion as they dare to anathematize 
 Virtue herself. 
 
 We cannot do less when we recollect the in- 
 juries we have sustained, and the still greater 
 injuries which, unopposed, our children must 
 sustain from them. For suffer me, my Lord, to 
 ask, with such a teacher as you have evermore 
 shewn yourself, how it is possible for the disci- 
 ples of your school to be any other than most 
 vicious beings ? What training of the reason ; 
 * Note to Don Juan. 
 
121 
 
 what guidance of the passions ; what feelings of 
 honour; what yearnings of patriotism; what 
 impressions of morality or religion, all of which 
 are necessary to form a useful member of society 
 and a Christian, have been inculcated by the 
 perusal of any of your multifarious works ? 
 What, in their didactic capacity, do they pro- 
 fess to teach? How to be good? how to be 
 great? how to be honest? how to be honour- 
 able? how to engage the esteem of God or 
 man, or of their own hearts ? Alas ! I tremble 
 for you while I speak it — their tendency is to in- 
 sinuate, and that most emphatically, how man 
 shall best divest himself of goodness, greatness, 
 honour, honesty, the favour of God, and the ap- 
 probation of his own conscience. If I am hasty 
 in this deduction, I deserve censure, and censure 
 of the severest kind ; but, if I am correct, what 
 shame, what scorn, what utter contempt and 
 abomination do you not yourself deserve ? He 
 who brutalizes every feeling that gives dignity 
 to social, every principle that imparts comfort 
 to domestic life — he who represents all chastity 
 as visionary and all virtue as vile, is not entitled 
 to be considered, or to be treated as a man — he 
 is a living, literary monster. 
 
 The time is not yet arrived, nor I fear likely, 
 though the voice of prophecy has been sounded 
 in our ears, when the Pilgrim, " in spite of bad 
 metaphysics and worse politics, may yet be a per- 
 son whose high talents the wise and virtuous may 
 
122 
 
 enjoy without a qualifying sigh or frown." * Alas ! 
 since this compassionate wish was uttered, there 
 has been no signal made of repentance ; no ap- 
 proach towards the shrine of Delphi with the 
 supplicating bough ! On the contrary, imper- 
 fection has been added to imperfection, and dis- 
 gust to disgust. Indeed, if we may believe re- 
 port, you are daily, my Lord, pouring out such 
 a body of burning lava upon the world, that no 
 rational criticism can approach, or defile itself 
 with it. The " Parody on Southey's Vision," 
 the " Liberal," and other conjoint efforts of the 
 Satanic school, I leave to the castigations.of the 
 passing day, by which, though your spirit may 
 not be broken, your heart, if it have any human 
 flesh about it, must be wounded, and your pride 
 mortified. When works of this description so 
 tread upon each other, it is not the praise of 
 posterity, it is not present praise, no, nor pre- 
 sent profit, that is coveted. What it is, I had 
 rather trust myself to conjecture than to declare. 
 One consolation, however, we have left; that 
 you and your satellites are beginning to glut the 
 market with prophaneness and ribaldry, large as 
 hath been the demand beyond all former prece- 
 dent. The commodity is become sickening, and 
 your whole literary career is rapidly dwindling 
 down to infantine imbecility. Go on, and scorn 
 will cease to point her finger. Go on, and learn, 
 
 * Quarterly Review, April 1818, No. 37. 
 
123 
 
 and feel that there is a degradation of genius too 
 despicable for even scorn itself. 
 
 What a path, my Lord, are you relinquishing, 
 and what a path are you pursuing ! To go with 
 the public voice rarely at variance with our 
 public conduct ; to speak the sentiments of wise 
 and good men when we give utterance to our 
 own; to sacrifice to the decorums of society 
 every indecency of thought and every licentious- 
 ness of act ; to believe that religion is the pro- 
 moter of our temporal and the security of our 
 future happiness, as age after age from remote 
 antiquity, with some almighty spell upon the 
 conscience, has believed : these are parts of the 
 solid duty of every created being who disdains 
 to live to no purpose, but, with a glorious ambi- 
 tion, would wish to be remembered by the gene- 
 rations that shall come after him. And only the 
 fool that saith in his hearty there is no God, or the 
 greater fool that acknowledges a God and defies 
 him, will be content to commute such a duty for 
 the indulgence of his passions, or to tranquillize 
 his feelings under the scandalous neglect of it. 
 
 But at a season when all laws are trampled 
 upon that have hitherto made Government to 
 every civilized kingdom a blessing; when all 
 religion is repudiated by the craft or violence 
 of those who themselves have little or no re- 
 gard for any religion ; when its doctrines 
 are disbelieved and its professors reviled by 
 wretches whose conduct is too infamous to dread 
 
124 
 
 any reproaches in return ; when authority, duty, 
 obedience, devotion, are daily more and more 
 losing their hold on the hearts and affections of 
 men— at such a season that you should devote 
 the powers of your genius to the strengthening 
 of such demoralizing principles ; that you should 
 pour forth a pestilential poetry which, in every 
 page of it, unhinges society in some corner-stone 
 or other of its majestic edifice ; that, in the bulk 
 of this poetry, you should not only individually 
 attack the established institutions of your own 
 country, but, stooping to a coalition with the 
 corrupt publications of the Continent, should 
 produce a combined mass of malignity conspiring 
 to overthrow not only every shadow of respect 
 for sceptres and mitres, wherever to be found, 
 but for even common order and decency, com- 
 mon honour and conscience— this is indeed to 
 tread a fearful path to fame ; to confess that 
 neither God nor man has any part in your affec- 
 tion, but that altogether discarding the virtues, 
 you desire no dealings save with the mere tur- 
 pitudes of our nature, and have no voice, no 
 hand, no heart, but for their promulgation and 
 
 prevalence ! 
 
 Csesar, my Lord, pondered with his conscience 
 before he passed the Rubicon. He was silent 
 with meditation and perplexed with doubt. He 
 reflected on the miseries he should bring on his 
 unhappy country by passing it, and the certain 
 destruction he should entail upon himself if his 
 
125 
 
 spirit now paused in its iniquity. He therefore 
 shut his eyes on his impious dream, boldly pro- 
 phaned the name of his Gods, cast the die, rush- 
 ed forward, triumphed, and fell. But you— con- 
 sulting and paying homage to the dictates of your 
 own wantonness of heart only ; you — more in- 
 exorable than this tyrant, and more a traitor to 
 your Country's peace ; with no yearnings of hu- 
 manity; no soothings of honour or of justice, of 
 religion or of conscience — you plunge at once 
 into the troubled stream, and never, for a mo- 
 ment, look back to see where Sin and Death 
 stand ready to follow upon your track, to snuff 
 the blood and to riot upon the carnage you are 
 preparing for them. 
 
 Wonder not, then, that we teach all to avoid the 
 perusal of your works who would avoid the ship- 
 wreck of conscience and of comfort, and that, 
 while we advert to their pernicious tendency, we 
 refrain, as much as possible, from imprudent 
 quotations. So well known, and so ably, in 
 many instances, analyzed, it may be sufficient to 
 speak of them in general terms even for the pur- 
 poses of particular implication. We would not 
 willingly give a larger currency than is needful 
 to sentiments that are cast for the destruction of 
 all that is dignified and valuable. We have our 
 established Religion ; we know its utility. We 
 have our Laws ; we know their excellency and 
 their efficacy. We have our free Constitution; we 
 know its virtues and its defects. We have men 
 
126 
 
 who cannot be brought, either in their devotions 
 or their politics, to think alike, but who yet 
 honestly and honourably speak the truth from the 
 heart while they think dissonantly. We have 
 women whose beauty is ingrafted on their chas- 
 tity, and whose chastity imparts a tenfold charm 
 to their beauty. But only let the poetry of Lord 
 Byron become the staple commodity of the 
 realm, and its prophane and libidinous sentiments 
 sway the national taste, — and neither religion, 
 nor law, nor constitution ; neither dignity in 
 man, nor reputation in woman, shall ever more 
 give lustre to this devoted land, nor shall the 
 British Empire be, as heretofore, a terror to the 
 kingdoms around her by the power of her arms, 
 but, by the prevalence of her corruption, a scorn, 
 and a proverb, and a contaminating nuisance. 
 
 But here, my Lord, we must now separate. I 
 cherish no hope that, in the foregoing reflections, 
 any thing has been advanced that will prevail on 
 you to review your writings, or to correct your 
 opinions. There is an apathy about you which 
 bids fair to continue you in your career of licen- 
 tiousness. You will probably therefore neither 
 ponder the tendency of your works, nor desist 
 from defiling the world by their repetition, But 
 if you thus persevere in inflicting upon society 
 these visitations of your muse, you will find 
 every hand lifted up against you and every heart 
 set to your entire abomination. Whether you 
 have virtue or manliness enough about you to be 
 
127 
 
 uneasy on such an account, I cannot say, nor 
 must I now stop to inquire. We may meet 
 again, God willing, on another and a more so- 
 lemn ground ; a ground yet untouched, and to 
 which this present Letter will shew but as a 
 faint and inadequate introduction. 
 
 I know the hazard of such an undertaking as I 
 here presume to meditate ; I know its unpalata- 
 bleness and its exposures. If I fail in devoting 
 you to your own Satanic Deities, hate and neglect, 
 and contempt await me. If I succeed, none will 
 thank me for my labour who either admire your 
 poetry, or approve of your sentiments. But we 
 are not less bound in our duty to society, though 
 society may look cold upon our endeavours. 
 There is such a thing as resting too much in su- 
 pineness. We do so when what we neglect to 
 condemn gathers force from indulgence ; when 
 what we hesitate to oppose grows formidable 
 from delay ; when what we fear to contemplate 
 in its gigantic dimensions, we may be destined to 
 behold with accumulated features of distortion. 
 We must, therefore, rise in resolution as the de- 
 moniac spirit rises in guilt. We must unsheathe 
 the falchion, and boldly wave it, at once, over 
 these infernal regions, or the shades will flicker 
 round, and drink the blood of the sacrifice, and, 
 with renewed unrighteousness, gibber forth their 
 audacities and their crimes. Your Cain has been 
 disseminated, and with no lack of deleterious 
 effect, throughout the Empire. Your Juan is 
 
128 
 
 running its wild career through evil report and good 
 report, condemned for its infamy by the laws of 
 the land, and by the laws of the land permitted to 
 spread that infamy in every direction ! But though 
 the terrors of Government sleep, public opinion 
 is watchful, and ripe for retribution. From the 
 chastisement which ought to attend such a pro- 
 duction, written with decidedly immoral views, 
 nothing must be allowed to screen you. The 
 " magni nominis umbra" under which you make 
 your insulting attacks upon religion and virtue, 
 shall not shelter so daring, so dastardly a spirit. 
 From the vain marble of the Persian shall be 
 carved out the statue of the Goddess of Ven- 
 geance : from your own works shall be extracted 
 your own imperishable criminality ; and I need 
 not, my Lord, add — so far as I may myself hap- 
 pen to be a humble party concerned — that with 
 such subjects before me, equally vile in their con- 
 ception and execution, what I have said already 
 is mercy to what I shall be constrained to say 
 hereafter. 
 
 I remain, my Lord, 
 
 &c. &c. 
 
 Cato. 
 
 January 1, 1824. 
 
 LONDON : 
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W. WETTON, 
 
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