Juan.

"But all this has nothing to do with the charming style of Don Juan, which is entirely and inimitably your own-the sweet, fiery, rapid, easy-beautifully easy, anti-humbug style of Don Ten stanzas of it are worth all your Manfred - and yet your Manfred is a noble poem, too, in its way. I had really no idea what a very clever fellow you were till I read Don Juan. In my humble opinion, there is very little in the literature of the present day that will stand the test of half a century, except the Scotch novels of Sir Walter Scott, and Don Juan. They will do so because they are written with perfect facility and naturebecause their materials are all drawn from life."

Coming once more to men with names, we present this extract from a Life of Byron, by the well-known author of "The Annals of the Parish," "The Provost," “The Entail," "Sir Andrew Wylie," "Lawrie Todd," and "The Member,"

XXXV. GALT.

"Strong objections have been made to the moral tendency of Don Juan; but, in the opinion of many, it is Lord Byron's masterpiece; and undoubtedly it displays all the varieties of his powers, combined with a quaint playfulness not found to an equal degree in any other of his works. The serious and pathetic portions are exquisitely beautiful; the descriptions have all the distinctness of the best pictures in Childe Harold, and are, morever, generally drawn from nature; while the satire is for the most part curiously associated and sparklingly witty. The characters are sketched with amazing firmness and freedom; and, though sometimes grotesque, are yet not often overcharged. It is professedly an epic poem, but it may be more properly described as a poetical novel. Nor can it be said to inculcate any particular moral, or to do more than unmantle the decorum of society. Bold and buoyant throughout, it exhibits a free irreverent knowledge of the world, laughing or mocking as the thought serves, in the most unexpected antitheses to the proprieties of time, place, and circumstance. The object of the poem is to describe the progress of a libertine through life; not an unprincipled prodigal, whose profligacy, growing with his growth and strengthening with his strength, passes from voluptuous indulgence into the morbid sensuality of systematic debauchery; but a young gentleman who, whirled by the vigour and vivacity of his animal spirits into a world of adventures, in which his stars are chiefly in fault for his liaisons, settles at last into an honourable lawgiver, a moral speaker on divorce bills, and possibly a subscriber to the Society for the Suppression of Vice."

Next to Mr. Galt we place the amiable and humane Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges, Baronet, of Denton and Lee Priory, Kent, author of " Mary Clifford," the "Censura Literaria," the " Autobiography of Clavering," &c. &c. &c.

XXXVI. BRYDGES.

"If I could not have the poetry of Lord Byron without the cost of his countervailing objections, I would still desire to have it in spite of the price. I am afraid that it was intertwined so deeply, that the separation was scarcely possible. I do not think that more modified energies would have produced it. Habits of modification tend to caution and to timidity. There is a responsibility which enchains vigour, and sits heavy upon hope. No being loves liberty like the Muse: but it may be said, that she ought not to love licentiousness! She must, however, be left to exercise the one or the other at her peril. Unfortunately, in Lord Byron's case, she sometimes passed the bounds; less often, however, than is supposed.

"Don Juan is, no doubt, very licentious in parts, which renders it dangerous to praise it very much; and makes it improper for those who have not a cool and correct judgment, and cannot separate the objectionable parts from the numerous beautiful passages intermixed. But nowhere is the poet's mind more elastic, free, and vigorous, and his knowledge of human nature more surprising. It has all sorts of faults, many of which cannot be defended, and some of which are disgusting; but it has, also, almost every sort of poetical merit; there are in it some of the finest passages which Lord Byron ever wrote; there is amazing knowledge of human nature in it; there is exquisite humour; there is freedom, and bound, and vigour of narrative, imagery, sentiment, and style, which are admirable; there is a vast fertility of deep, extensive, and original thought, and, at the same time, there is the profusion of a prompt and most richly-stored memory. The invention is lively and poetical; the descriptions are brilliant and glowing, yet, not overwrought, but fresh from nature, and faithful to her colours; and the prevalent character of the whole (bating too many dark spots) not dispiriting, though gloomy; not misanthropic, though bitter; and not repulsive to the visions of poetical enthusiasm, though indignant and resent. ful. I know not how to wish he had never written this poem, in spite of all its faults and intermingled mischief! There are parts of it which are among the most brilliant proofs of his genius; and, what is even better, there are parts which throw a blaze of light upon the knowledge of human life."

After depicting the mode of Life pursued by Lord

Byron at Venice, in 1817-18, his biographer thus notices Don Juan :

"It was at this time, as the features of the progeny itself would but too plainly indicate, that Lord Byron conceived and wrote part of his poem of Don Juan;- and never did pages more faithfully, and in many respects lamentably, reflect every variety of feeling, and whim, and passion that, like the rack of autumn, swept across the author's mind in writing them. Nothing less, indeed, than that singular combination of attributes, which existed and were in full activity in his mind at this moment, could have suggested, or been capable of the execution of such a work, The cool shrewdness of age, with the vivacity and glowing temperament of youth, the wit of a Voltaire, with the sensibility of a Rousseau, the minute practical knowledge of a man of society, with the abstract and self-contemplative spirit of the poet, a susceptibility of all that is grandest and most affecting in human virtue, with a deep, withering experience of all that is most fatal to it, the two extremes, in short, of man's mixed and inconsistent nature, now rankly smelling of earth, now breathing of heaven, such was the strange assemblage of contrary elements, all meeting together in the same mind, and all brought to bear, in turn, upon the same task, from which alone could have sprung this extraordinary poem-the most powerful and, in many respects, painful display of the versatility of genius that has ever been left for succeeding ages to wonder and deplore."

Immediately on receiving the news of Lord Byron's death Sir Walter Scott, as is known to all, sent to one of the Edinburgh newspapers a touching tribute to his memory. Perhaps a more fitting place might have been found in this collection for parts of the following extract; - but we cannot prevail on ourselves to present it here in a mutilated form.

XXXVIII. SCOTT.

"Amidst the general calmness of the political atmosphere, we have been stunned, from another quarter, by one of those death notes, which are pealed at intervals, as from an archangel's trumpet, to awaken the soul of a whole people at once. Lord Byron, who has so long and so amply filled the highest place in the public eye, has shared the lot of humanity. That mighty genius, which walked amongst men as something superior to

ordinary mortality, and whose powers were beheld with wonder, and something approaching to terror, as if we knew not whether they were of good or of evil, is laid as soundly to rest as the poor peasant whose ideas went not beyond his daily task. The voice of just blame and of malignant censure are at once silenced; and we feel almost as if the great luminary of heaven had suddenly disappeared from the sky, at the moment when every telescope was levelled for the examination of the spots which dimmed its brightness. It is not now the question, what were Byron's faults, what his mistakes; but, how is the blank which he has left in British literature to be filled up? Not, we fear, in one generation, which, among many highly gifted persons, has produced none which approached Lord Byron in ORIGINALITY, the first attribute of genius. Only thirty-six years old - so much already done for immortality so much time remaining, as it seemed to us short-sighted mortals, to maintain and to extend his fame, and to atone for errors in conduct and levities in composition, - who will not grieve that such a race has been shortened, though not always keeping the straight path; such a light extinguished, though sometimes flaming to dazzle and to bewilder? One word on this ungrateful subject, ere we quit it for ever.

"The errors of Lord Byron arose neither from depravity of heart, for Nature had not committed the anomaly of uniting to such extraordinary talents an imperfect moral sense, nor from feelings dead to the admiration of virtue. No man had ever a kinder heart for sympathy, or a more open hand for the relief of distress; and no mind was ever more formed for the enthusiastic admiration of noble actions, providing he was convinced that the actors had proceeded on disinterested principles. Remonstrances from a friend, of whose intentions and kindness he was secure, had often great weight with him; but there were few who would venture on a task so difficult. Reproof he endured with impatience, and reproach hardened him in his error; so that he often resembled the gallant war-steed, who rushes forward on the steel that wounds him. In the most painful crisis of his private life, he evinced this irritability and impatience of censure in such a degree, as almost to resemble the noble victim of the bull-fight, which is more maddened by the squibs, darts, and petty annoyances of the unworthy crowds beyond the lists, than by the lance of his nobler, and, so to speak, his more legitimate antagonist. In a word, much of that in which he erred was in bravado and scorn of his censors, and was done with the motive of Dryden's despot, to show his arbitrary power.'

"As various in composition as Shakspeare himself (this will be admitted by all who are acquainted with his Don Juan '), he has embraced every topic of human life, and sounded every string on the divine harp, from its slightest to its most powerful and heartastounding tones. There is scarce a passion or a situation which has escaped his pen; and he might be drawn, like Garrick, between

the weeping and the laughing Muse, although his most powerful efforts have certainly been devoted to Melpomene. His genius seemed as prolific as various. The most prodigal use did not exhaust his powers, nay seemed rather to increase their vigour. Neither Childe Harold, nor any of the most beautiful of Byron's earlier tales, contain more exquisite morsels of poetry than are to be found scattered through the cantos of Don Juan, amidst verses which the author appears to have thrown off with an effort as spontaneous as that of a tree resigning its leaves to the wind. But that noble tree will never more bear fruit or blossom! It has been cut down in its strength, and the past is all that remains to us of Byron. We can scarcely reconcile ourselves to the idea scarce think that the voice is silent for ever, which, bursting so often on our ear, was often heard with rapturous admiration, sometimes with regret, but always with the deepest interest,

All that's bright must fade,

The brightest still the fleetest!'

With a strong feeling of awful sorrow, we take leave of the subject. Death creeps upon our most serious as well as upon our most idle employments; and it is a reflection solemn and gratifying, that he found our Byron in no moment of levity, but contributing his fortune, and hazarding his life, in behalf of a people only endeared to him by their own past glories, and as fellowcreatures suffering under the yoke of a heathen oppressor. Το have fallen in a crusade for Freedom and Humanity, as in olden times it would have been an atonement for the blackest crimes, may in the present be allowed to expiate greater follies than even exaggerating calumny has propagated against Byron."

In a little journal conducted by the great poet of Germany, Goethe, and entitled "Kunst und Altherthum," i. e. "Art and Antiquity" (Part III. 1821), there appeared a translation into German of part of the first canto of Don Juan, with some remarks on the poem, by the venerable Editor, of which we next submit a specimen :

XXXIX. GOETHE.

"Don Juan is a thoroughly genial work - misanthropical to the bitterest savageness, tender to the most exquisite delicacy of sweet feelings; and when we once understand and appreciate the author, and make up our minds not fretfully and vainly to wish him other than he is, it is impossible not to enjoy what he