and misery at which he had been present, he thus concludes: "I then grew out of humour with the world, because it was so unfeeling and so miserable, and because there was no cure for its miseries; and I wished for a lodging in the wilderness, where I might hear no more of wrongs, affliction, or vice; but, after all my speculations, I found there was a reason for these things in the gospel of Jesus Christ; and that for those who sought it there, there was a cure."

The most important part of a poem like this, is doubtless the sentimental part. The descriptive part is its dress, and this may satisfy superficial tastes. But those who look for profounder pleasure decide by severer tests. They feel that the value of poetry, and the pledge of its immortality, consist in its tone of thought, and in the spirit of its expression; in that deep-stirring impulse which is felt in the recesses of the heart; that here its power, its virtue, its vitality resides: that it is the part in which it is most emphatically and spiritually efficacious for good or for bad; and that if poetry fail in this part of its office and character, the defect is punished by the retributive hand of time, which sweeps it into the limbo of oblivion with other vanities, that, after their day of mischief and delusion, retire to make way for their successors. Lord Byron's poetry in the descriptive part is admirable; it fails in the sentimental altogether. In this his greatest work there is no consistent line of thought; the poem has no argument, no purpose, no principle, neither harmony of character, nor identity of plan; an ill-assorted variety of vague impressions are made upon the hearer, having only a common character of discontent to unite them, and reconciled only in their equal distance from truth and utility.

Like all poets, he thinks fit to be much enamoured of solitude; and in all that relates to the scenery of romantic quiet, he has few equals, and no superiors. But his sentiments have neither the interest of virtue, nor the tenderness of sensibility, nor the force of fidelity. His notion of the excellence of retirement is this, that it enables us to steal from ourselves. Now this seems much rather the effect of mingling with life, in its thickest resorts, than of the lonely leisure of the grove or forest. We can, indeed, understand that

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture in the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar."

(Stanza clxxviii.)

But this pleasure, and this rapture, and this society, come not from dissipation of thought, or separation from ourselves, but from a more intimate communication with God through his works,—from a holy satisfaction of soul in the contemplation of

ourselves, as his creatures, and the objects of his care; from the mingled sense of dependence, privilege, obligation, love, and delight, which fills the bosom of a real Christian, while he feels his relation and resemblance, however carnally disfigured, to the dread Sovereign of all he surveys. The account which Lord Byron gives in his 32d stanza of the advantages of solitude, has nothing of the colouring or information of experience-still less of the divine mood and mystery of melancholy. It is what a man might write, who could not endure his own company for an hour. It is the mere cant and common-place of song and sentiment. The calm languor of "sauntering hours" hath not, as he tells us it hath, its morality:" nothing hath less of "morality," and nothing less "teaches us how to die." Nor is it true that this solitude "hath no flatterers:" unless the heart is humble, and the thoughts devout, it hath one the greatest of all flatterers-a man's self. Nothing is more easy than for a worldly and vain person, sick of the things around him, because he has not known how to use them, and sick of others, because he has made others sick of him, to get into a corner, and regale himself with the perfumes of his own selfidolatry. But such a man, in such a situation, will neither feel his mortality, nor learn how to die, nor arrive at a knowledge of himself, nor in any degree become wiser and better. It is only the religious man who can improve solitude, or honestly say he loves to be much alone.

If we suppose it not written for poetic effect, but to be really representative of the state of Lord Byron's mind, it is actually distressing to read the following stanzas:

"I've taught me other tongues--and in strange eyes
Have made me not a stranger; to the mind
Which is itself, no changes bring surprise;
Nor is it harsh to make, nor hard to find
A country with-ay, or without mankind;
Yet was I born where men are proud to be,
Not without cause; and should I leave behind
The inviolate island of the sage and free,
And seek me out a home by a remoter sea,

"Perhaps I loved it well: and should I lay
My ashes in a soil which is not mine,
My spirit shall resume it—if we may
Unbodied choose a sanctuary. I twine
My hopes of being remember'd in my line
With my land's language: if too fond and far
These aspirations in their scope incline,-
If my fame should be, as my fortunes are,
Of hasty growth and blight, and dull Oblivion bar

"My name from out the temple where the dead
Are honour'd by the nations-let it be-
And light the laurels on a loftier head!
And be the Spartan's epitaph on me→
'Sparta hath many a worthier son than he.'
Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need;
The thorns which I have reap'd are of the tree
I planted, they have torn me, and I bleed:

I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed."

(P. 7, 8.) Now why is all this? Why cannot his Lordship live in peace. among us? What have we done to forfeit our title to the benefit of his talents, properly directed? Almost all that life has to bestow were his in this inviolate island of the sage and free." Providence, or if he like the Roman goddess better, Fortune had accumulated favour and felicity upon his head; in ancient Athens, the frequent theme of his adiniration, an equal elevation might have subjected him to banishment out of pure envy of his prosperity. Whom has he then to blame for his present absence from home, and for the evils which appear to surround him? If they are of his own creation, as he seems to intimate, we must confess we do not regard them as a fit subject for poetical display. It is really the first time we have found a writer making a picturesque use of his own faults, covering them with the mantle of the muse, or transforming them into decorations by the magical touch of his genius. To speak plainly, it does really appear to us that the great and dangerous fault of this whole poem of Childe Harold is that very delusive medium through which man, his necessities, his interests, and his duties, are presented to man; the false sentiment which runs in a vein of egotism through the whole composition; and a sort of epicurean despondency and heartless gloom, which discolours the pathos of the finest passages.

But what are the terms upon which Lord Byron will be content to sojourn in his native country? If we were of power and authority to capitulate with him, it should be upon the conditions of his giving to man at least a fair account of the rank, and influence, and patrimony, and education, which he has received from his country. If we are really, in his judgment, the inviolate island of the sage and free," surely we deserve his most strenuous endeavours to preserve us so. What is there to expatriate an Englishman of principle, however mistaking may be his views of his country's interest? If he come among us to inveigh against government, or reform abuses, or restore us to our Saxon estate, or procure for every man, woman, and child in the country, the right of suffrage, let him do it all with an English mind; there is much less to fear from English prejudice,

than from foreign illumination; let him come to domesticate with us in a state and disposition of mind amenable to all those rules, restraints, and proprieties, which, while they seem to diminish, do really double the resources of substantial pleasure, and which refine by controuling our enjoyments. If we are to understand from the tenth stanza, that the poet, when speaking in the first person, means himself, he appears to be in a situation of the most melancholy kind,-torn by thorns of his own planting: under such circumstances, then, what ought to be his reflections? Surely, that if the course which he has hitherto been pursuing has had the natural effect of making him bleed, and suffer anguish, the honour of his intellect is concerned in his turning out of this thorny road, and making a manly effort to follow after that Guide which has conducted so many into the ways of pleasantness and the paths of peace. The pride of his understanding will receive no humiliation by a change thus brought about by his own experience.

There is but one effectual cure for human sorrow, reaching from its origin to its consequences. But as far as the internal evidence of the canto before us goes, we perceive no approach to that panacea. That which has caused us the most pain in the perusal of Lord Byron's productions has been the profane levity with which subjects and names, the most solemn and adorable, have been generally treated, and we lament to say that the pernicious habit discovers itself but too apparently in this last canto of his poem. Of the Pantheon at Rome he thus speaks:

"Shrine of all saints, and temple of all gods,

From Jove to Jesus-"

In another stanza, wherein the death of the Princess of Saxe Cobourg is deplored, he has this expression:

"Her and her hoped-for seed, whose promise seem'd
Like stars to shepherds' eyes.-"

There occur other passages which to our minds are extremely irreverent and shocking, and the more so as they appear to be quite wanton and gratuitous; as in the 92d and 155th stanzas, where the allusions impart neither vigour nor splendor to the verse. Perhaps his Lordship may think that the accusing spirit and recording angel will help us through difficulties of this kind by and bye, as in the case of Uncle Toby. For our parts, we cannot bring ourselves steadily to contemplate the issue of the hazardous experiment. We have never been able thoroughly to conceive the extent of that hardihood which, with nothing more than the mere frightful possibility of there being a God and a day of account, can brave the risk of Omnipotent displeasure.

We have another charge to make against Lord Byron, although

we are very ready to allow that there is less ground for it in the present canto of this poem than in most of his other productions. We allude to the licentious imagery too frequently employed by him when the attractions of the other sex are the subject of his descriptive energy. We enter our protest against it in behalf of the sex themselves. They are candidates for higher praise than that which confines itself to their personal charms. There is a touch of Orientalism, something Mohammedan, in the descriptions of female excellence throughout all Lord Byron's poems; and if in this poem we find in addition a colouring of Italian gallantry, the case is not much improved. We think it is much too evident that the poet has borrowed his ideas about women from countries where they are considered as the instruments of sensual gratification, and not as the equal partners of our comforts, our converse, and our cares. His verses seem to take no view or cognizance of them in their moral and intellectual capacity and character. He is blind to their real value. He sees but a part of their destination. His travelled judgment of them has given him a prejudiced apprehension of their worth and dignity in the commerce of life. He has been used to see them, in the countries he has visited, considered as the merchandise of sensual luxury, or as the sport of unprincipled desire; abridged of those rights of birth and nature which have constituted them the lawful sharers, and sweetners, and refiners of our fortunes, our felicities, and our virtues. It is apparent from every record of the human race, that the influence of the sex is always in exact proportion to the honour in which their chastity is held among men. The warm and impassioned strains of Lord Byron's poetry, as they import no respect for women, so no woman that merits respect can peruse them with pleasure, unless she is herself without discernment. We have, indeed, never failed to notice the want of purity and delicacy in most of the passages of Lord Byron's poetry which have the charms of woman, or the feelings which they excite, for their subject. For the shape his sentiments assume on this head in the preceding cantos, we refer our readers to the 16th article in the third volume of this journal, and the first article in volume the ninth; and take the liberty of recommending the perusal of those articles, in conjunction with the present, as forming together but one essay on the character and tendencies of this principal production of Lord Byron's pen. The 78th and 79th stanzas of the third canto drew from us some remarks, which apply with equal truth to the 51st of this fourth and concluding part of the poem, which is an indifferent imitation of the voluptuous invocation with which Lucretius introduces his poem. The very strain after an overflowing fulness in the description, has however rendered Lord Byron's imagery disgusting, and thereby