with that of Boiardo, the honour of having formed and suggested the style and story of Ariosto. The great defects of Boiardo were his treating too seriously the narratives of chivalry, and his harsh style. Ariosto, in his continuation, by a judicious mixture of the gaiety of Pulci, has avoided the one, and Berni, in his reformation of Boiardo's poem, has corrected the other. Pulci may be considered as the precursor and model of Berni altogether, as he has partly been to Ariosto, however inferior to both his copyists. He is no less the founder of a new style of poetry very lately sprung up in England. I allude to that of the ingenious Whistlecraft.'

The canto which Lord Byron translated describes the Paladin Orlando leaving the court of Charlemagne in great anger at the calumnies and treacheries of Ganellone, to which Charles lent too ready an ear. The knight journeys into distant lands, and at length reaches an abbey, where he finds the inhabitants in great dread of the attacks of three giants, who annoy them by throwing fragments of the rocks at them, and by all imaginable devices making their lives uncomfortable, and even dangerous. Orlando offers to go and fight them; and, notwithstanding the abbot's remonstrances, he actually does go. He kills two of the monstrous brethren, Passamont and Alabaster, and then goes in search of Morgante, whom he converts to Christianity :

Morgante had a palace in his mode,

Composed of branches, logs of wood, and earth,
And stretched himself at ease in this abode,
And shut himself at night within his birth.
Orlando knocked, and knocked again to goad
The giant from his sleep; and he came forth,
The door to open, like a crazy thing,
For a rough dream had shook him slumbering.

He thought that a fierce serpent had attacked him,
And Mahomet he called, but Mahomet

Is nothing worth, and not an instant backed him!
But praying blessed Jesu, he was set
At liberty from all the fears which racked him;

And to the gate he came with great regret—
'Who knocks here?' grumbling all the while, said he:
'That,' said Orlando, you will quickly see.

'I come to preach to you, as to your brothers,
Sent by the miserable monks-repentance ;

For Providence divine, in you and others,

Condemns the evil done my new acquaintance.
'Tis writ on high-your wrong must pay another's;
From Heaven itself is issued out this sentence:
Know then, that colder now than a pilaster
I left your Passamont and Alabaster.'

Morgante said, O gentle cavalier!

Now by thy God say me no villainy;
The favour of your name I fain would hear;
And if a Christian, speak for courtesy.'
Replied Orlando, 'So much to your ear
I by my faith disclose contentedly;
Christ I adore, who is the genuine Lord,
And, if you please, by you may be adored.'
The Saracen rejoined in humble tone,

I have had an extraordinary vision;
A savage serpent fell on me alone,

And Macon would not pity my condition
Hence to thy God, who for ye did atone

Upon the cross, preferred I my petition;
His timely succour set me safe and free,
And I a Christian am disposed to be.'

;

Orlando carries his new convert to the monastery, to beg pardon of the abbot and the monks for the many wrongs he has done them; and, as a proof of the sincerity of his repentance, and of his abhorrence of his former evil course, he cuts off the hands of his dead brethren.

The abbot is frightened at first when he sees Morgante; but, being soon convinced of his devout intentions, he gives him a long exhortation to lead a godly life, which Morgante hears to his great edification.

There is a sad want of water in the convent, to supply which the giant takes an enormous tub on his shoulder, and goes to the fountain to fill it. This is, however, a service of some danger, the fountain being beset by a herd of wild boars, from whom any body but so tall a fellow as Morgante would have found it very difficult to save his bacon. He gives a good account of the boars :

Morgante at a venture shot an arrow,

Which pierced a pig precisely in the ear,
And passed unto the other side quite thorough,
So that the boar, defunct, lay, tripped up near.

Another, to revenge his fellow farrow,

Against the giant rushed in fierce career,
And reached the passage with so swift a foot
Morgante was not now in time to shoot.

Perceiving that the pig was on him close,
He gave him such a punch upon the head*
As floored him, so that he no more arose-
Smashing the very bone; and he fell dead
Next to the other. Having seen such blows,
The other pigs along the valley fled;
Morgante on his neck the bucket took,

Full from the spring, which neither swerved nor shook.

The ton was on one shoulder, and there were
The hogs on t'other, and he brushed apace
On to the abbey, though by no means near,
Nor spilt one drop of water in his race.
Orlando, seeing him so soon appear,

With the dead boars, and with that brimful vase,
Marvelled to see his strength so very great ;-

So did the abbot, and set wide the gate.

Morgante becomes very popular among the almost famishing monks by the supplies which he thus brings them. The abbot, by way of rewarding him, gives him a horse; which, wholly unable to bear the monster's weight, bursts under him, to the great wonder and vexation of Morgante, who makes nothing of lifting the dead steed upon his shoulder, and carrying him out of sight into the wood.

Orlando is soon tired of the idle life at the monastery; and, having with great difficulty found some armour to fit Morgante, they proceed on their adventures; and thus ends the canto.

The business of translation was wholly beneath Lord Byron; and, but that it is our design to give our readers an account of all his lordship's literary productions, we should hardly have noticed this. The Liberal' only went to a fourth Number.

'Gli dette in sulla testa un gran punzone.' It is strange that Pulci should have literally anticipated the technical terms of my old friend and master Jackson and the art which he has carried to its highest pitch. A punch on the head,' or ' a punch in the head,' un punzone in sulla testa,' is the exact and frequent phrase of our best pugilists, who little dream that they are talking the purest Tuscan.

CHAPTER XIV.

LORD BYRON permitted himself to indulge his ill temper so far as to write a satire-and not a good one-on the political affairs of the times. There is one passage in it which is really interesting and beautiful: it is that in which the poet alludes to the imprisonment and death of Buonaparte. With this extract we shall dismiss the

'Age of Bronze :'

But where is he, the modern, mightier far,
Who, born no king, made monarchs draw his car;
The new Sesostris, whose unharnessed kings,
Freed from the bit, believe themselves with wings,
And spurn the dust o'er which they crawled of late,
Chained to the chariot of the chieftain's state?

Yes! where is he, the 'champion and the child

Of all that's great or little, wise or wild?

Whose game was empires, and whose stakes were thrones ?
Whose table earth-whose dice were human bones ?

Behold the grand result in yon lone isle,
And, as thy nature urges, weep or smile.
Sigh to behold the eagle's lofty rage
Reduced to nibble at his narrow cage;
Smile to survey the Queller of the Nations
Now daily squabbling o'er disputed rations;
Weep to perceive him mourning, as he dines,
O'er curtailed dishes and o'er stinted wines;
O'er petty quarrels upon petty things.

Is this the man who scourged or feasted kings?
Behold the scales in which his fortune hangs,
A surgeon's statement and an earl's harangues!
A bust delayed, a book refused, can shake
The sleep of him who kept the world awake.
Is this indeed the Tamer of the Great,
Now slave of all could tease or irritate-
The paltry gaoler and the prying spy,
The staring stranger with his note-Look nigh?
Plunged in a dungeon, he had still been great;
How low, how little, was this middle state,

Between a prison and a palace, where
How few could feel for what he had to bear!
Vain his complaint,-ny lord presents his bill,
His food and wine were doled out duly still:
Vain was his sickness,-never was a clime
So free from homicide-to doubt's a crime;
And the stiff surgeon, who maintained his cause,
Hath lost his place, and gained the world's applause.
But smile-though all the pangs of brain and heart
Disdain, defy, the tardy aid of art;

Though, save the few fond friends, and imaged face
Of that fair boy his sire shall ne'er embrace,
None stand by his low bed-though even the mind.
Be wavering, which long awed and awes mankind;
Smile for the fettered eagle breaks his chain,

And higher worlds than this are his again.

The subject of the next poem which Lord Byron published was suggested by the description given, in Mariner's Account of the Tonga Islands,' of the fertility and beauty of that singular, and to us almost new, country. Lord Byron's mind received a most powerful and highly-pleasing impression from that account. He was never tired of talking of it to his friends, and announced his intention of introducing into some of his works the new and poetical feelings which his fancy had conjured up in connexion with a country rich in all the productions of nature, and uncorrupted by the vices of civilization. He was for some time at a loss for a subject, which, indeed, it must be obvious to every one, is not very easy to be found. History has as yet had little to do with the countries to which the descriptions were to refer, and without some foundation it is almost impossible to build up enough of a narration to answer the purpose even of a poem. It was no less difficult so to connect the doings of the inhabitants of the old world with those of the new one as to excite thes ympathies of such as were to be his readers. At length, in the history of the mutiny by the crew of the Bounty, in the South Seas, in the year 1789, Lord Byron found the materials which, in his hands, were soon wrought into the shape which he required.

Captain Bligh had been sent out on an expedition to the South Seas, generally for scientific purposes; and to make discoveries as well respecting the navigation in those latitudes, of which very little was then known, as to add to the knowledge which was already pos