natural calamities, which neither he nor any other mortal could have prevented, any more than they could abolish the measles or the small pox, or any other of the ills that flesh is heir to.' Michael bids him call his witnesses. First Wilkes appears, who declines to say any thing against the king, and is reproached by Satan, as our Irish orator at the Old Bailey bullies a witness who will not swear all that the learned person wishes. Then Junius comes; but what he says, or meant to say, is not quite intelligible: he, however, vanishes; and then Washington, Horne Tooke, and Franklin, are called. At this moment Asmodeus enters, with a burden on his back, which, upon his laying it down, turns out to be Dr. Southey. Asmodeus has caught him 'anticipating,' as he says, 'the very business they are now upon.' Southey is thus described:

The varlet was not an ill-favoured knave;

A good deal like a vulture in the face,
With a hook nose and a hawk's eye, which gave
A smart and sharper-looking sort of grace
To his whole aspect, which, though rather grave,
Was by no means so ugly as his case;

But that indeed was hopeless as can be,
Quite a poetic felony de se.'

Upon being called on to make answer to Asmodeus's charge

He said (I only give the heads)—he said,

He meant no harm in scribbling; 'twas his way
Upon all topics; 'twas, besides, his bread,

Of which he buttered both sides; 'twould delay
Too long the assembly (he was pleased to dread),
And take up rather more time than a day,

To name his works-he would but cite a few-
'Wat Tyler Rhymes on Blenheim'-' Waterloo.'

He had written praises of a regicide;

He had written praises of all kings whatever;
He had written for republics far and wide,
And then against them bitterer than ever;

For pantisocracy he once had cried

Aloud, a scheme less moral than 'twas clever,

Then grew a hearty anti-jacobin

Had turned his coat-and would have turned his skin.

He had sung against all battles, and again

In their high praise and glory; he had called Reviewing the ungentle craft,' and then Become as base a critic as e'er crawled

Fed, paid, and pampered by the very men

By whom his muse and morals had been mauled : He had written much blank verse, and blanker prose, And more of both than any body knows.

He had written Wesley's 'Life :'-Here, turning round
To Sathan, Sir, I am ready to write yours,
In two octavo volumes, nicely bound,

With notes and preface, all that most allures
The pious purchaser; and there's no ground

For fear, for I can choose my own reviewers:
So let me have the proper documents,
That I may add you to my other saints.'

Sathan bowed, and was silent. Well, if you,

With amiable modesty, decline

My offer, what says Michael? There are few
Whose memoirs could be rendered more divine.

Mine is a pen of all work; not so new

As it was once, but I would make you shine
Like your own trumpet; by the way, my own
Has more of brass in it, and is as well blown.

But, talking about trumpets, here's my "Vision!"
Now you shall judge, all people! yes, you shall
Judge with my judgment; and by my decision
Be guided who shall enter heaven or fall!

I settle all these things by intuition,

Times present, past, to come, heaveu, hell, and all, Like King Alfonso! When I thus see double,

I save the Deity some worlds of trouble.'

He ceased, and drew forth an MS.; and no
Persuasion on the part of devils, or saints,
Or angels, now could stop the torrent; so
He read the first three lines of the contents;
But, at the fourth, the whole spiritual show
Had vanished, with variety of scents,

Ambrosial and sulphureous, as they sprang,

Like lightning, off from his melodious twang.'

6

The confusion which ensued it seems impossible to describe. St. Michael endeavours to blow his trump, for the purpose of stilling the uproar; but his teeth were set on edge, he could not blow.' St. Peter, who was more irascible, raised his keys, and knocked the poet down, who fell into the Lake of Keswick :

He first sunk to the bottom-like his works,
But soon rose to the surface-like himself;
For all corrupted things are buoyed, like corks,
By their own rottenness, light as an elf,
Or wisp that flits o'er a morass: he lurks,

It may be still like dull books on a shelf,

In his own den, to crawl some 'Life' or 'Vision,'
As Wellborn says- the devil turn'd precisian.'

As for the rest, to come to the conclusion

Of this true dream, the telescope is gone

Which kept any optics free from all delusion,

And showed me what I in my turn have shown:

All I saw farther in the last confusion

Was, that King George slipped into heaven for one;
And, when the tumult dwindled to a calm,

I left him practising the hundredth psalm.

And thus ends this ill-timed and ill-tempered effort to be revenged on Dr. Southey, in accomplishing which Lord Byron was rash enough to encounter the disgust of most of his countrymen, and the hate o some of them. The publisher, Mr. J. Hunt, was indicted for this poem; and the trial took place in January, 1824. Before he was brought

up for judgment Lord Byron was no more; and this circumstance probably influenced the Court in the sentence which was passed. Mr. J. Hunt was condemned to pay a fine of one hundred pounds.

In a succeeding number of the Liberal' a dramatic poem, or 'Mystery,' as the noble author chose to call it, came forth, not avowed by Lord Byron, but well known to be his.

The previous announcement, that Lord Byron had employed his talents upon a subject similar to that which had engaged the author of 'Lalla Rookh,' excited, as it was well calculated to do, a considerable sensation. The difference of style and feeling, and expression, between

these poets, although both of them were known to possess genius of the very highest order, made the public look forward with deep interest to the appearance of the two poems. Mr. Moore's was published first, and, if it did not add much to his reputation, was still not far below his former doings, Lord Byron's appeared, and was wholly different not only from Mr. Moore's, but from every thing that he had previously done. It was a mixture of profound skill and culpable negligence; and, while it was in some respects worthy of its author, it was in others not superior to the common run of magazine poetry. If the same paius had been bestowed upon it as Lord Byron was wont to take with his productions before they were submitted to the public eye, it would, in all probability, have ranked with his best efforts. But the spell was upon him; he had lost all respect for the public voice; he had even lost all respect for his own lofty genius, and for the fame which he had achieved. Villainous company had been the ruin of him;' and he wrote for the Liberal' what was not worthy of a more honorable destiny.

The mystery of Heaven and Earth,' by which title Lord Byron chose to call this poem, is professedly only a sketch, and one part alone of it was written. It is said, in the title-page, to be founded on the following passage in Genesis, chap. vi.—' And it came to passthat the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.' The scene is laid in a district in the neighbourhood of Mount Ararat, and the time at which the action passes is that immediately preceding the deluge. In the first scene Anah and Aholibamah, two of the daughters of the seed of Cain, enter, and from the dialogue between them is learnt that they love, and are loved by, two of the angels. The idea of this may have been suggested by the passage which has been quoted; but the manner in which it is executed may be traced to the splendid fictions of the Rosicrucian philosophy, as it is developed by the ingenious author of the Comte de Gabalis.' The contrast between the sisters, and the different modes of the same passion which prevail in the minds of each, are traced with a delicacy and force which was all Lord Byron's own, and in which, notwithstanding the faults of the poem, every reader must see and acknowledge the master-hand. Anah is mild, confiding, timid; loving so fondly and so well that she seeks the sole reward of all her anxiety in the enjoyment of her passion, and in being permitted to love her seraph-lord, Azaziel. Aholibamah, on the other hand, loves no less, but with a more lofty passion; she feels

that her affection raises her to that heaven of which her Samiasa is a denizen, and is happy because his love equals her own. Her pride mixes up with and even strengthens her passion, and makes it independent of all but itself.

Japhet, the son of Noah, loves Anah, but seeks in vain to inspire a similar feeling in a bosom which is all another's. His passion, which neither contempt nor repulse can diminish, is made still more desperate by the certainty which he possesses of the destruction of the world and of Anab, while he is doomed to the agony of surviving her. A soliloquy of his, in which he anticipates the coming destruction, is very fine. The scene is laid amid the rocks of Caucasus :

Ye wilds, that look eternal; and thou cave,
Which seem'st unfathomable; and ye mountains,
So varied and so terrible in beauty;

Here, in your rugged majesty of rocks.

And toppling trees that twine their roots with stone
In perpendicular places, where the foot

Of man would tremble, could he reach them-yes,
Ye look eternal! Yet, in a few days,

Perhaps even hours, ye will be changed, rent, hurled
Before the mass of waters; and yon cave,

Which seems to lead into a lower world,

Shall have its depths scarched by the sweeping wave,
And dolphins gambol in the lion's den!

And man

-Oh, men! my fellow beings! who
Shall weep above your universal grave,

Save I? Who shall be left to weep? My kinsmen,

Alas! what am I better than ye are,

That I must live beyond ye? Where shall be
The pleasant places where I thought of Anah
While I had hope? or the more savage haunts,
Scarce less, beloved, where I despaired for her?
And can it be-Shall yon exulting peak,
Whose glittering top is like a distant star,
Lie low beneath the boiling of the deep?
No more to have the morning sun break forth,
And scatter back the mists in floating folds
From its tremendous brow? no more to have
Day's broad orb drop behind its head at even,