duce that result which is the best test of thority of Wilson, that the obscure lives of fairness it did not satisfy impartial men these fallen great ones were embittered by that he ought to have been found guilty. a deadly hatred, which took the place of The French ambassador, writing to his their former inordinate affection; insomuch court, said, that "if the Earl's enemies that the Earl and Countess, though had not been powerful he would not have living in the same house for many years, been found guilty; for there was no con- never spoke to each other. This story may vincing proof against him, but only circum- be true or false it rests on the sole austances, such as might serve in France for thority of one whose friendship for Essex putting him to the question, which is not biassed him against the Countess, and who the custom here in England."-p. 358. appears to have been naturally somewhat over-credulous.

The judges had no occasion to intercede with James for Somerset's life. He had made We have thus hastily sketched an outno inconvenient revelations, and he was line of that dark transaction, the exposure treated gently. After a time, the Earl and of which is styled, by Sir Edward Coke, Countess were released, but never again the "Great Oyer of Poisoning," and which received at court or in society-they passed he desired might go down to posterity as an the rest of their days in seclusion. Some example and terror against that horrible years afterwards, the Earl was consulted by crime. We may quit the subject with the James upon some displeasure he had taken satisfactory reflection, that, dark and foul against Buckingham; but Somerset's more as the business is, the truth, as it is now fortunate and more able successor was not brought to light, proves the number of the to be shaken off, and he himself remained criminals not to be so great, nor their blacka man disgraced. Later still, in the reign ness so unredeemed, as has been commonly of Charles I., Somerset entered, or wished supposed. If it be the part of an historian to enter, into some intrigues with the lead-freely to denounce great guilt, it is equally ers of the popular party; but these were his duty, a far more agreeable duty, to too wise to have much to do with a man of clear, even the guilty, from an odium greater his character. Hume tells us, on the au- than they have deserved.

ous.

From Tait's Magazine.

LORD BYRON.

BY GEORGE GILFILLAN, AUTHOR OF A GALLERY OF LITERARY PORTRAITS."

It is with diffidence that we approach the judgment pronounced upon the first, second, subject of the following sketch. It may or third stories of a building, as they sucseem that to attempt a new estimate of cessively arise, does not forestal the opia character, so thoroughly scrutinized, and so widely appreciated as that of Byron, is an attempt alike hopeless and presumptaAnd if we did approach it with the desire of finding or saying anything absolutely new, we should feel the full force of the objection. But this is far from being our ambition. We have decided to sketch Lord Byron's genius for the following reasons. In the first place a very narrow is never a very wide, a very particular is seldom a very just scrutiny or estimate. In the second place, the criticism of single works pouring from the press, however acute and admirable, is not equivalent to a review of these works taken as a whole. A

nion of one who can overlook the complete structure. Of Byron's several writings we have every variety of separate critiques, good, bad, and indifferent-of his genius, as animating his whole works, we have no criticism, either indifferent, bad, or good. In the third place, the tumult which all Byron's productions instantly excited, the space they cleared and burnt out for themselves, falling like bombshells among the crowd, the strong passions they awakened in their readers, through that intense personality which marked them all, rendered cool appreciation at the time impossible. They came upon the public like powerful sermons on an excited audience, sweeping

criticism away before them, blotting out and twisted for man, is away elsewhere to principles of art from the memory of the be solved that heart so differently reportseverest judges, whose hearts they stormed, ed of by different operators, has undergone whose passions they inflamed-at the same the stern analysis of death. His works time that they sometimes revolted their have now emerged from that fluctuating tastes, and sometimes insulted their under- and lurid shadow of himself, which seemed standings. At night there was intoxication to haunt and guard them all; and we can -in the morning calm reflection came. now judge of them, though not apart from But, in the meantime, the poet was away, his personal history, yet undistracted by its his song had become immortal, and the perpetual protrusion. In the next place, threatened arrows were quietly returned to Byron was the victim of two opposite curthe quiver again. In the next place, Byron's rents in the public feeling-one unduly exlife and story formed a running commen- alting, and the other unduly depressing his tary upon his works, which tended at once name, both of which have now so far subsided, to excite and to bewilder his readers. His that we can judge of him out of the immeworks have now illustrated editions: they diate or overbearing influence of either. did not require this while he lived. Then, And in the last place, as intimated already, his romantic history, partially disclosed, no attempt has been made since his death, and therefore more affective in its interests either to collect the scattered flowers of -his early, hapless love-his first unfortu- former fugitive criticism, to be bound in nate publication-his Grecian travels--his one chaplet round his pale and noble brow, resistless rush into fame-his miserable or to wreathe for it fresh and independent marriage-his amours-the glorious back- laurels. Moore's life is a long apology for grounds which he chose for his tragic atti- his memory, such as a partial friend might tudes, Switzerland and Italy-his personal be expected to make to a public, then parbeauty-his very lameness-the odd and tial, and unwilling to be convicted of misyet unludicrous compound which he formed placed idolatry. Macaulay's Critique is of Vulcan and Venus, of Apollo and Satyr- an elegant fasciculus of all the fine things favorite and football of destiny-the mys- which it had occurred to him, might be terious spectacle he presented of a most said on such a theme-exhibits, besides, miserable man, composed of all the mate- the coarse current of Byron's life caught in rials which make others happy-the quaint crystal and tinged with couleur de rose, like mixture of all opposites in his character, a foul winter stream shining in ice and irreconcilable till in the ruin of death-the elaborate and cunning counteraction of every noble gift and accomplishment by some one fatal defect-the cloak of mystery which he now carefully threw over, and now pettishly withdrew from his own character-the impossibilty of either thoroughly hating, or loving, or laughing at him-the unique and many-sided puzzle which he thus made, had the effect of maddening Our humble endeavor at present is to the public, and of mystifying his critics. make some small contribution towards a fuHal is charged by Falstaff with giving him ture likeness of the poet Byron. And medicines to make him love him. Byron whatever may be the effect of our remarks gave men medicines to educe towards him- upon the public, and however they may or self a mixture of all possible feelings-an- may not fail in starting from slumber the ger, envy, admiration, love, pity, blame, "Coming Man" who shall criticise Byron horror, and above all, wonder as to what as Thomas Carlyle has criticised Jean Paul, could be the conceivable issue of a life so and Wilson Burns, this at least shall be high and so low-so earthly and so unearth- ours we shall have expressed our honest ly-so spiritual and so sensual-so melan- convictions-uttered an idea that has long choly and so mirthful, as he was notoriously lain upon our minds-and repaid in part, a leading. This was the perpetual stimu- debt of gratitude which we owe to Byron, lus to the readers of his works-this the as men owe to some terrible teacher, who eternal face and figure, filling the margins has at once roused and tortured their minds; of all his pages. This now is over. That as men owe to the thunder peal which has strange life is lived-that knot, too hard awakened them, sweltering at the hour

evening sunshine-and has many beautiful remarks about his poems; but neither abounds in original views, nor gives, what its author could so admirably have given, a collection of common opinions on his entire genius and works, forming a full-length portrait, ideally like, vigorously distinct, and set, in his own unequalled imagery and language, as in a frame of gold.

when it behoved them to start on some jour-to impugn any system of religion: for if ney of life and death. one thing be more certain about him than We propose to methodize our paper un-another, it is, that he had no settled conder the following outlines. We would, in victions on such subjects at all-and was the first place, inquire into Byron's purpose. only beginning to entertain a desire towards Secondly, into the relation in which he has forming them when the great teacher, stood to his age, and the influence he has Death, arrived. Nor was his purpose mereexerted over it. Thirdly, into the leading ly to display his own powers and passions features of his artistic execution. Fourth- in imposing aspects; although much of this ly, speak of the materials on which his desire mingled with his ambition, still he genius fed. Fifthly, glance at the more was not altogether a vain attitudinizer. characteristic of his works. And, sixthly, There is a sterling truth in his taste and try to settle his rank as a Poet. We would style of writing-there is sincerity in his first ask of Byron the simple question, anguish-and his little pieces particularly, "What do you mean?" A simple ques-are the mere wringings of his heart! Who tion, truly, but significant as well, and not can doubt that his brow, the index of the always very easy to answer. It is always, soul, darkened as he wrote that fearful however, our duty to ask it; and we have, curse, the burden of which is "Forgivein general, a right, surely, to expect a re-ness?" The paper, on which was written ply. If a man come and make us a speech, his Farewell to Lady Byron, is still extant, we are entitled to understand his language and it is all blurred and blotted with his tears. as well as to see his object. If a man ad- His poem, entitled " The Dream," is as sinminister to us a reproof, or salute us with cere as if it had been penned in blood. And a sudden blow, we have a double right to was he not sincere in sleep, when he ground turn round and ask "What's that for?" his teeth to pieces in gnashing them? But Nay, if a man come professing to utter an his sincerity was not of that profound, conoracular deliverance, even in this case, we stant, and consistent kind, which deserves expect some glimmer of definite meaning the stronger name of earnestness. It did and object; and if glimmer there be none, not answer to the best description in poetry we are justified in concluding that neither of the progress of such a spirit, which goes has there been any oracle. "Oracles on, speak;" oracles should also shine. Now, in Byron's case, we have a man coming forward to utter speeches-to administer reproofs-to smite the public on both cheeks

"Like to the Pontiack sea
Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps right on
To the Propontick and the Hellespont."

in the attitude of an accuser, impeaching man-of a blasphemer attacking God-of It was a sincerity such as the falsest and the a prophet expressing himself, moreover, most hollow of men must express when with the clearness and the certainty of pro-stung to the quick; for hath not a human found and dogmatic conviction; and we sham as well as a Jew-" eyes, hands, orhave thus, more than a threefold right to gans, dimensions, senses, affections, pasinquire, what is your drift, what would you sions. Is he not fed with the same food, have us to believe, or what to do? Now, and hurt by the same weapon? If you here, precisely, we think, is Byron's fatal prick him, does he not bleed? If you tickle defect. He has no such clear, distinct, and him, does he not laugh? If you poison him, overpowering object, as were worthy of, or does he not die? And if you wrong him, has secured the complete concentration of does he not revenge?" Purpose, therefore, his splendid powers. His object! What in its genuine simplicity, and quiet, deep is it Not to preach the duty of univer- sincerity, was awanting in Byron's characsal despair; or to inculcate the propriety of ter. And this greatly accounts for the an "act of universal, simultaneous suicide;" wreck which he became; and for that miselse, why did he not, in the first place, set ery-a misery which was wonderful, passing the example himself, and from "Leucadia's the woe of man-which sat down upon his rock," or Etna's crater, precipitate himself, spirit. Many accounts have been given of as a signal for the species to follow; and his grief. Macaulay says that he was a why, in the second place, did he profess spoiled child, another in verse declaressuch trust in schemes of political amelio ation, and die in the act of leading on a Revolutionary war? Not to teach, nor yet

"The thought that he was greater than his kind
Had struck, methought, his eagle spirit blind
By gazing at its own exceeding light."

But the plain prose and English of it lies in his union of intensity of power with the want of intensity of purpose. He was neither one thing, nor yet another. Life with him was neither, on the one hand, an earnest single-eyed effort, nor was it, could it be a mere display. He believed, and trembled as he believed, that it was a serious thing to die; but did not sufficiently, if at all, feel, that it was a serious thing to live. He would not struggle: he must shine; but could not be content with mere shining without struggle. And hence, ill at ease with himself, aimless and hopeless, "like the Cyclopsmad with blindness," he turned to bay against society-man-and the Maker. And hence, amid all that he has said to the world and said so eloquently, and so mournfully, and said amid such wide, and silent, and profound attention-he has told it little save his own sad story.

was not before his age in anything, in opinion, or in feeling. He was not, in all or many things, disgracefully behind it; nor did he move with equal and measured steps in its procession. He stood to the age in a most awkward and uncertain attitude. He sneered at its advancement, and he lent money, and ultimately lost his life, in attempting to promote it. He spoke with uniform contempt, and imitated with as uniform emulation, the masterpieces of its literature. He abused Wordsworth in public, and in private "rolled him as sweet morsel under his tongue;" or rather, if you believe himself, took him as a drastic dose, to purify his bilious and unhappy nature, by the strongest contrasted element that he could find. He often reviled and ridiculed revealed religion, and yet read the Bible more faithfully and statedly than most professed Christians-made up I pass, secondly, to speak of the rela- in superstition what he wanted in faith. tion in which he stood to his age. The re--had a devout horror at beginning his lations in which a man stands to his age are poems, undertaking his journeys, or paring perhaps threefold. He is either before it, his nails on a Friday-and had he lived or behind it, or exactly on a level with it. would probably have ended, like his own He is either its forerunner, or he is dragged Giaour, as "Brother Byron," with hair as a captive at its chariot wheels; or he shirt, and iron-spiked girdle, in some walks calmly, and step for step, along with Achaian or Armenian convent. He habitit. We behold in Milton the man before ually trampled on, and seems sometimes to his age-not, indeed, in point of moral have really despised, the opinion of the grandeur or mental power; for remember, public; and yet, in some points, felt it so his age was the age of the Puritans, the keenly, that, says Ebenezer Elliot, "he age of Hampden, Selden, Howe, Vane, would almost have gone into hysterics had and of Cromwell, who was a greater wri- a tailor laughed at him." And although, ter than Milton himself-only it was with when the Edinburgh Review sought to the sword that he wrote-and whose deeds crush him like a worm, he rose from the were quite commensurate with Milton's words. But in point of liberality of sentiment and width of view, the Poet strode across entire centuries, and went, indeed, so far before his contemporaries that he seemed, to many of them, to dwindle in the distance. We see in Southey the man behind his age, who, indeed, in his youth, took a rash and rapid race in advance, but returned like a beaten dog, cowed, abashed, with downcast head, and tail between his legs, and remained for the rest of his life, aloof from the great movements of society We behold in Brougham one whom once the age was proud to claim as its child and champion, the express image of its bustling, restless, versatile, and onward character, and of whom we still at least say, with a sigh, he might have been the Man of his time. In which of these relations, is it asked, did Byron stand to his age? We are forced to answer in none of them. He

heel, a fiery, flying dragon; yet, to the as-
saults of the meaner creatures of the press,
he was pervious all over, and allowed min-
nikin arrows, which were beneath his laugh-
ter, to rouse his rage. Absurd and ludi-
crous the spectacle that of this Laocoon,
covered from head to foot with the snakes
of supernal vengeance, bearing their bur-
den with deep agonized silence, starting and
shrieking upon the application of a thorn,
which the hand of some puny passing ma-
lignant hand had thrust into his foot.
one respect, we grant that Byron was the spi-
rit of the age; he was the representative of
its wants, its weakness, its discontents, its
dark unrest-but not of its aspirations, its
widening charity, and its hopeful tendencies.
His voice was the deep vague moan of the
world's dream-his writhing anguish, the
last struggle of its troubled slumber : it has
since awaked, or is awakening, and, "as a
dream when one awakeneth," it is despis

In

ing, too much despising, his image. He stream of its crowd, imperfectly adjusted was a beaten man, standing high yet help- to its customs, indifferently reconciled to less between the Old and the New, and all its laws-among men, but not of them--a the helpless and the hopeless rallied round man of the world, but not a man of the him, to proclaim him the one-eyed monarch age: and who has rather fallen furiously of the blind; say rather to constitute him through it-"a wild diver" spurning the first magistrate over a city in flames; supreme heights and seeking the depths-than left ruler in a blasted and ruined realm. In one on it any deep or definite impression. thing he was certainly a prophet; namely, Some men are buried and straightway fora prophet of evil. As misery was the secret gotten-shovelled out of memory as soon sting of all his inspiration, it became the as shovelled into the tomb. Öthers are invariable matter of all his song. In some buried, and from their graves, through the of his poems, you have Misery contemplat- hands of ministering love, arise fragrant ing; in others, Misery weeping aloud; in flowers and verdant branches, and thus are others, Misery revolving and reproducing they, in a subordinate sense, "raised in the past; in others, Misery bursting the glory." Others, again, lie down in the dust, confines of the world, as if in search of a and though no blossom or bough marks the wider hell than that in which it felt itself spot, and though the timid shun it at evenenvironed; in others, Misery stopping to ing-tides, as a spot unblessed-yet, forgotturn and rend its real or imaginary foes; ten it can never be, for there lies the record and in others, Misery breaking out into of a great guilty life extinct, and the crown hollow, hopeless, and heartless laughter. of crime sits silent and shadowy on the (What a terrible thing is the laugh of the tombstone. This is Byron's memorial in unhappy! It is the very "echo to the seat the age. But, as even on Nero's tomb where sorrow is throned.") But in all you" some hand unseen strewed flowers," and have misery, and whether he returns as "nothing dies but something mourns,' the old thunder in a voice of hundred pow- let us lay a frail garland upon the sepulchre er and majesty, or sings an evening song of a ruin, itself a desolation, and say Rewith the grasshopper at his feet-smiles quiescat in pace, as we hurry on. the smile of bitterness, or sheds the burn- I come, thirdly, to speak of the leading ing tears of anger-his voice still speaks of feature of his artistic execution, and the desolation, mourning, and woe; the vo- materials which his genius used. And cabulary of grief labors under the de- here there are less mingled feelings to emmands of his melancholy genius; and ne- barrass the critical contemplator. Strong, ver, never more, till this scene of tears and direct intellect, descriptive force, and persighs be ended, shall we meet with a more sonal passion, seem the main elements of authentic and profound expounder of the Byron's poetical power. He sees clearly, he wretchedness of man. And as such selects judiciously for effect from among the we deem him to have done good service; points he does see, and he paints them with a first, because he who approaches towards pencil dipped in his own fiery heart. He was the bottom of human woe, proves that it is the last representative of the English chanot altogether bottomless, however deep; racter of mind. His lordly independbecause, if human grief spring from human ence and high-spiritedness; his fearless greatness, in unveiling the grief he is illus- avowal of his prejudices however narrow, trating the grandeur of man; and, because and passions however coarse; his constant the writings of Byron have saved us, in clearness and decision of tone and of style; this country, what in France has been so his manly vigor and directness; his strong pernicious," the literature of desperation;" unreasoning instinctive sense; his abhorthey are a literature of desperation in them-rence of mysticism; and his frequent caselves: they condense, into one volume, prices-all savored of that literature which what in France has been diluted throughout many, and consequently our country has drained off at one gulp, and survived the experiment, the poison which our neighbors have been sipping for years to their daily harm.

Thus on the whole, we regard Byron neither as in any sense a creator, nor wholly as a creature of his period; but rather, as a stranger entangled in the passing

had reared Dryden, Pope, and Johnson; and every peculiarity of the English school seems to have clustered in and around him, as its last splendid specimen. Since then our higher literature is rapidly charging with the German element. Byron was ultimus Romanorum-the last, and, with the exceptions of Shakspeare and Milton, the greatest purely English poet. His manner