We would entreat him to believe that a certain portion of liveliness, somewhat of fancy, is necessary to constitute a poem; and that a poem in the present day, to be read, must contain at least one thought either in a little degree different from the ideas of former writers, or differently expressed. We put it to his candour whether there is any thing so deserving the name of poetry in verses like the following, written in 1806? and whether, if a youth of eighteen could say any thing so uninteresting to his ancestors, a youth of nineteen should publish it?

"Shades of heroes, farewell! your descendant, departing
From the seat of his ancestors, bids you adieu!
Abroad, or at home, your remembrance imparting
New courage, he'll think upon glory and you.
Though a tear dim his eye at this sad separation,
'Tis nature, not fear, that excites his regret:
Far distant he goes, with the same emulation;
The fame of his fathers he ne'er can forget.
That fame, and that memory, still will he cherish;

He vows that he ne'er will disgrace your renown:

Like you will he live, or like you will he perish;

When decayed, may he mingle his dust with your own!"

'Now we positively do assert that there is nothing better than these stanzas in the whole compass of the noble minor's volume.

'Lord Byron should also have a care of attempting what the greatest poets have done before him, for comparisons (as he must have had occasion to see at his writing-master's) are odious. Gray's Ode to Eton College should really have kept out the ten hobbling stanzas on a distant view of the village and school at Harrow.

"Where Fancy yet joys to retrace the resemblance
Of comrades in friendship or mischief allied,
How welcome to me your ne'er-fading remembrance,
Which rests in the bosom, though hope is denied."

"On a Tear,"

In like manner the exquisite lines of Mr. Rogers, might have warned the noble author off those premises, and spared us a whole dozen such stanzas as the following:

"Mild Charity's glow,

To us mortals below,

Shows the soul from barbarity clear;
Compassion will melt

Where this virtue is felt,

And its dew is diffused in a Tear.

The man doomed to sail

With the blast of the gale,
Through billows Atlantic to steer,
As he bends o'er the wave,
Which may soon be his grave,

The green sparkles bright with a Tear."

And so of instances in which former poets had failed. Thus, we do not think Lord Byron was made for trauslating, during his non-age, "Adrian's Address to his Soul," when Pope succeeded indifferently in the attempt. If our readers, however, are of another opinion, they may look at it:

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"Ah! gentle, fleeting, wavering sprite,
Friend and associate of this clay!

To what unknown region borne,

Wilt thou now wing thy distant flight? -
No more with wonted humour gay,

But pallid, cheerless, and forlorn."

However, be this as it may, we fear his translations and imitations are great favorites with Lord Byron. We have them of all kinds, from Anacreon to Ossian; and, viewing them as school exercises, they may pass. Only, why print them after they have had their day and, served their turn? And why call the thing in p. 79 a translation, where two words (y) of the original are expanded into four lines, and the other thing in p. 81, where μεσονυκτίοις ποθ ̓ ὁραις is rendered by means of six hobbling verses? As to his Ossianic poesy, we are not very good judges; being, in truth, so moderately skilled in that species of composition, that we should, in all probability, be criticising some bit of the genuine Macpherson itself, were we to express our opinion of Lord Byron's rhapsodies. If, then, the following beginning of a Song of Bards" is by his Lordship, we venture to object to it, as far as we can comprehend it. "What form rises on the roar of clouds? Whose dark ghost gleams on the red streams of tempests? His voice rolls on the thunder: 'tis Orla, the brown Chief of Oithona. He was,' " &c. After detaining this "brown

chief" some time, the bards conclude by giving him their advice to "raise his fair locks;" then to " spread them on the arch of the rainbow ;" and to " smile through the tears of the storm." Of this kind of thing there are no less than nine pages; and we can so far venture an opinion in their favour, that they look very like Macpherson; and we are positive they are pretty nearly as stupid and tiresome.

'It is a sort of privilege of poets to be egotists; but they should "use it as not abusing it ;" and particularly one who piques himself (though indeed at the ripe age of nineteen) of being "an infant bard”—(" The artless Helicon I boast is youth")—should either not know, or should seem not to know, so much about his own ancestry. ́ Besides a poem, above cited, on the family seat of the Byrons, we have another of eleven pages on the self-same subject, introduced with an apology, "he certainly had no intention of inserting it;" but really the particular request of some friends," &c. &c. cludes with five stanzas on himself, "the last and youngest of the noble line." There is a good deal also about his maternal ancestors in a poem on Lachin y Gair, a mountain where he spent a part of his youth, and might have learnt that pibroch is not a bagpipe, any more than duet means a fiddle.

It con

'As the author has dedicated so large a part of his volume to immortalize his employments at school and college, we cannot possibly dismiss it without presenting the reader with a specimen of these ingenious effusions. In an ode with a Greek motto, called Granta, we

have the following magnificent stanzas:

"There, in apartments small and damp,

The candidate for college prizes
Sits poring by the midnight lamp,
Goes late to bed, yet early rises.
Who reads false quantities in Sele,*

Or puzzles o'er the deep triangle;
Deprived of many a wholesome meal,

In barbarous Latin doomed to wrangle;

This alludes to the Analysis of Greek Metres,' by J. B. Sele, D. D. of Christ's College; a standard work on the construction of the Greek poetry, and which Lord Byron ought to have studied, and made himself master of before he tried his wit upon it.

Renouncing every pleasing page

From authors of historic use;
Preferring to the lettered sage

The square of the hypothenuse.
Still harmless are these occupations,

That hurt none but the hapless student,
Compared with other recreations,

Which bring together the imprudent."

We are sorry to hear so bad an account of the College Psalmody as is contained in the following Attic stanzas:

"Our choir would scarcely be excused,

Even as a band of raw beginners;

All mercy, now, must be refused

To such a set of croaking sinners.

If David, when his toils were ended,

Had heard these blockheads sing before him,
To us his Psalms had ne'er descended-

In furious mood he would have tore 'em."

'But, whatever judgment may be passed on the poems of this noble minor, it seems we must take them as we find them, and be content; for they are the last we shall ever have from him. He is at best, he says, but an intruder into the groves of Parnassus; he never lived in a garret, like thorough-bred poets; and, "though he once roved a careless mountaineer in the Highlands of Scotland," he has not of late enjoyed this advantage. Moreover, he expects no profit from his publication; and, whether it succeeds or not, "it is highly improbable, from his situation and pursuits hereafter," that he should again condescend to become an author. Therefore, let us take what we get, and be thankful. What right have we poor devils to be nice? We are well off to have got so much from a man of this lord's station, who does not live in a garret, but "has the sway" of Newstead Abbey. Again, we say, let us be thankful; and, with honest Sancho, bid God bless the giver, nor look the gift horse in the mouth.'

Such was the bitter draught which these professors of the ' gentle craft' of reviewing had prepared for the young poet, and which they were themselves soon afterwards compelled to drain to the very dregs.

Up to this period Lord Byron's life had been like that of most young men of fashion. He had not plunged very deeply into the

Oh! what a noble heart was here undone,
When Science 'self destroyed her favorite son!
Yes, she too much indulged thy fond pursuit-
She sowed the seeds, but Death has reaped the fruit.
'Twas thine own Genius gave the final blow,
And helped to plant the wound that laid thee low:
So the struck eagle, stretched upon the plain,
No more through rolling clouds to soar again,
Viewed his own feather on the fatal dart,
And winged the shaft that quivered in his heart:
Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel
He nursed the pinion which impelled the steel,
While the same plumage that had warmed his nest
Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast,

There be who say, in these enlightened days,
That splendid lies are all the poet's praise;
That strained invention, ever on the wing,
Alone impels the modern bard to sing.

'Tis true that all who rhyme, nay, all who write,
Shrink from that fatal word to Genius-Trite:
Yet Truth sometimes will lend her noblest fires,
And decorate the verse herself inspires :
This fact in Virtue's name let Crabbe attest—
Though Nature's sternest painter, yet the best.

And here let Shee* and genius find a place,
Whose pen and pencil yield an equal grace;
To guide whose hand the sister Arts combine,
And trace the poet's or the painter's line;
Whose magic touch can bid the canvass glow,
Or pour the easy rhyme's harmonious flow,
While honours doubly merited attend
The poet's rival, but the painter's friend.

Blessed is the man who dare approach the bower
Where dwelt the Muses at their natal hour;

Whose steps have pressed, whose eye has marked afar,
The clime that nursed the sons of song and war,
The scenes which glory still must hover o'er;
Her place of birth, her own Achaian shore!

• Mr. Shee, author of Rhymes on Art' and 'Elements of Art.'

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