The native genius with their feeling given
Will point the path, and peal their notes to heaven.
And thou, too, Scorr!' resign to minstrels rude
The wilder slogan of a Border feud :

Let others spin their meagre rhymes for hire-
Enough for genius if itself inspire!

Let SOUTHEY sing, although his teeming muse,
Prolific every string, be too profuse;

Let simple WORDSWORTH chime his childish verse,
And brother COLERIDGE lull the babe at nurse;
Let spectre-mongering LEWIS aim at most,
To rouse the galleries, or to raise a ghost;

Let MOORE be lewd; let STRANGFORD steal from MOORE,
And swear that CAMOENS sang such notes of yore:
Let HAYLEY hobble on, MONTGOMERY rave,
And godly GRAHAME chaunt a stupid stave;
Let sonneteering BOWLES his strains reline,
And whine and whimper to the fourteenth line;
Let STOTT, CARLISLE, MATILDA, and the rest
Of Grub-street, and of Grosvenor-place the best,
Scrawl on, till death release us from the strain,
Or common sense assert her rights again :
But thou, with powers that mock the aid of praise,
Shouldst leave to humbler bards ignoble lays:
Thy country's voice, the voice of all the Nine,
Demand a hallow'd harp-that harp is thine.
Say! will not Caledonia's annals yield
The glorious record of some nobler field,
Than the vile foray of a plundering clan,
Whose proudest deeds disgrace the name of man?
Or Marmion's acts of darkness, fitter food
For outlaw'd Sherwood's tales of Robin Hood?
Scotland! still proudly claim thy native bard,
And be thy praise his first, his best reward!
Yet not with thee alone his name should live,
But own the vast renown a world can give;
Be known, perchance, when Albion is no more,
And tell the tale of what she was before;
To future times her faded fame recal,
And save her glory, though his country fall.

Yet what avails the sanguine poet's hope To conquer ages, and with time to cope? New eras spread their wings, new nations rise, And other victors' fill the applauding skies: A few brief generations fleet along, Whose sons forget the poet and his song: Een now what once-loved minstrels scarce may claim The transient mention of a dubious name! When Fames loud trump hath blown its noblest blast, Though long the sound, the echo sleeps at last, And glory, like the phonix, 'midst her fires, Exhales her odours, blazes, and expires.

Shall hoary Granta call her sable sous,
Expert in science, more expert at puns?
Shall these approach the muse? ah, no! she flies,
And even sparns the great Seatonian prize,
Though printers condescend the press to soil
With rhyme by HOARE, and epic blank by HoYLE:
Not him whose page, if still upheld by whist,
Requires no sacred theme to bid us list 2
Ye, who in Granta's honours would surpass,
Must mount her Pegasus, a full-grown ass-
A foal well worthy of her ancient dam,
Whose Helicon is duller than her Cam.
There CLARKE, still striving piteously « to please,»
Forgetting doggrel leads not to degrees,

A would-be satirist, a hired buffoon,
A monthly scribbler of some low lampoon,
Condemn'd to drudge, the meanest of the mean,
And furnish falsehoods for a magazine,
Devotes to scandal his congenial mind-
Himself a living libel on mankind.

O dark asylum of a Vandal race!4

At once the boast of learning, and disgrace;
So sunk in dulness and so lost in shame,
That SMYTHE and HODGSON1 scarce redeem thy fame!
But where fair Isis rolls her purer wave,
The partial muse delighted loves to lave;
On her green banks a greener wreath is wove,
To crown the bards that haunt her classic grove,
Where RICHARDS wakes a genuine poet's fires,
And modern Britons justly praise their sires.6

For me, who thus, unask'd, have dared to tell
My country what her sons should know too well,
Zeal for her honour bade me here engage
The host of idiots that infest her age.

Tollere humo, victorque virum volitare per ora.-VIRGIL,
The Games of Hoyle, wll known to the votaries of whist,

chess, etc. are not to be superseded by the varies of his portical Damesake, whose poem comprised, as expressly stated in the advertisement, all the Plagues of Egypt.

3 This person, who has lately betrayed the most rapid symptoms of confirmed authorship, is writer of a poctu denominated the Art of Pleasing, as - fucus a non lucendo, continin ; little pleasantry, and less poetry. He also acts as monthly stipendiary and colles tor of calumnies for the Satirist. If this unfortunate young man would exchange the magazines for the mathematics, and endeavour to take a decent degree in his university, it might eventually prove more serviceable than his present salary.

+ Into Cambrid,,eshire the Emperor Probus transported a cops'derable body of Vandals,--Gibbon's Decline and Ed', page 55, vol. 2. There is no reason to dout the truth of this assertion-the breed is still in high pertes tion. This gentleman s name requires no praise: the man who in translation displays unquestional le genius, may will be expected to excel in original composition, of which it is to be hoped we shall soon ser a splendid specimen.

The Aborigina. Britons, an excellent poem by Ricпands.

Ne just applause her honour'd name shall lose,
As first in freedom, dearest to the muse.
Oh, would thy bards but emulate thy fame,
And rise more worthy, Albion, of thy name!
What Athens was in science, Rome in power,
What Tyre appear'd in her meridian hour,
Tis thine at once, fair Albion, to have been,
Earth's chief dictatress, Ocean's mighty queen:
But Rome decay'd, and Athens strewd the plain,
And Tyre's proud piers lie shatter'd in the main:
Like these thy strength may sink in ruin hurid,
And Britain fall, the bulwark of the world.
But let me cease, and dread Cassandra's fate,
With warning ever scoff'd at, 'till too late;
To themes less lofty still my lay confine,
And urge thy bards to gain a name like thine.

Then, hapless Britain! be thy rulers blest,
The senate's oracles, the people's jest!
Still hear thy motley orators dispense
The flowers of rhetoric, though not of sense,
While CANNING's colleagues hate him for his wit,
And old dame PORTLAND fills the place of PITT.

Yet once again adieu! ere this the sail
That wafts me hence is shivering in the gale:
And Afric's coast and Calpe's adverse height,
And Stamboul's 3 minarets must greet my sight:
Thence shall I stray through beauty's 4 native clime,
Where Kaff is clad in rocks, and crown'd with snows
sublime.

But should I back return, no letter'd rage
Shall drag my common-place book on the stage:
Let vain VALENTIA 6 rival luckless CARR,
And equal him whose work he sought to mar;
Let ABERDEEN and ELGIN 7 still pursue
The shade of fame through regions of virtu;
Waste useless thousands on their Phidian freaks,
Misshapen monuments and maim'd antiques;
And make their grand saloons a general mart
For all the mutilated blocks of art:

Of Dardan tours let dilettanti tell,

I leave topography to classic GELL;

And, quite content, no more shall interpose
To stun mankind with poesy or prose.

Thus far I've held my undisturb'd career,
Prepared for rancour, steel'd 'gainst selfish fear:
This thing of rhyme I ne'er disdain'd to own-
Though not obtrusive, yet not quite unknown:

* Calpe is the ancient name of Gibraltar.

* Stamboul is the Turkish word for Constantinople.

• Georgia, remarkable for the beauty of its inhabitants.
3 Mount Caucasus.

• Lord VALETTIA (whose tremendous travels are forthcoming,

with dae decorations, graphical, topographical, and typographical deposed, on Sir Joux Cana's unlucky suit, that D.sois satire prevented his purchase of the Stranger in Ireland.-Oh fie, my Lord has your lorship no more feeling for a fellow-tourist? but two of a trade, they say, etc.

Lord Eers would fain persuade us that all the figures, with

I and without noses, in his stone-shop, are the work of Phidías! •Credat Judæos.•

Mr Gr Topography of Troy and Ithaca cannot fail to ensure the approbation of every man possessed of classical taste, as well for the information Mr G. conveys to the mind of the reader, as for the ability and research the respective works display.

My voice was heard again, though not so loud;
My page, though nameless, never disavow'd,
And now at once I tear the veil away:
Cheer on the pack! the quarry stands at bay,
Unscared by all the din of Me1 BOURNE-house,
By LAMBE's resentment, or by HOLLAND'S spouse,
By JEFFREY'S harmless pistol, Hallam's rage,
EDINA'S brawny sons and brimstone page.
Our men in buckram shall have blows enough,
And feel they too are « penetrable stuff: »
And though I hope not hence unscathed to go,
Who conquers me shall find a stubborn foe.

The time hath been, when no harsh sound would fall
From lips that now may seem imbued with gall,
Nor fools nor follies tempt me to despise
The meanest thing that crawl'd beneath my eyes:
But now, so callous grown, so changed since youth,
I've learned to think and sternly speak the truth;
Learn'd to deride the critics starch decree,
And break him on the wheel he meant for me;
To spurn the rod a scribbler bids me kiss,
Nor care if courts and crowds applaud or hiss:
Nay, more, though all my rival rhymesters frown,
I too can hunt a poetaster down;

And, arm'd in proof, the gauntlet cast at once
To Scotch marauder, and to southern dunce.
Thus much I've dared to do; how far my lay
Hath wrongd these righteous times, let others say;
This let the world, which knows not how to spare,
Yet rarely blames unjustly, now declare.

POSTSCRIPT.'

I HAVE been informed, since the present edition went to the press, that my trusty and well beloved cousins, the Edinburgh Reviewers, are preparing a most vehement critique on my poor, gentle, unresisting muse, whom they have already so bedeviled with their ungodly ribaldry:

.Tantæne animis cœlestibas iræ!»

I suppose I must say of JEFFREY as Sir ANDREW AGUECHEEK saith, «an I had known he was so cunning of fence, I had seen him damned ere I had fought him.» What a pity it is that I shall be beyond the Bosphorus before the next number has passed the Tweed! But yet I hope to light my pipe with it in Persia.

My northern friends have accused me, with justice, of personality towards their great literary Anthropophagus, JEFFREY: but what else was to be done with him and his dirty pack, who feed « by lying and slandering,» and slake their thirst by evil-speaking? I have adduced facts already well known, and of Jeffrey's mind I have stated my free opinion; nor has he thence sustained any injury: what scavenger was ever soiled by being pelted with mud? It may be said that I quit England because I have censured there « persons of honour and wit about town;» but I am coming back again, and their vengeance will keep hot ull my return. Those who know me can testify that my motives for leaving England are very different from fears, literary or personal; those who do not, may one day be convinced,

Published to the Second Edition.

Since the publication of this thing, my name has not been concealed; I have been mostly in London, ready to answer for my transgressions, and in daily expectation of sundry cartels; but, alas! « The age of chivalry is over;» or, in the vulgar tongue, there is no spirit now-a-days.

There is a youth yclept Hewson Clarke (subaudi, Esq.), a sizer of Emanuel College, and I believe a denizen of Berwick upon Tweed, whom I have introduced in these pages to much better company than he has been accustomed to meet: he is, notwithstanding, a very sad dog, and, for no reason that I can discover, except a personal quarrel with a bear, kept by me at Cambridge to sit for a fellowship, and whom the jealousy of his Trinity contemporaries prevented from success, has been abusing me, and, what is worse, the defenceless innocent above mentioned, in the Satirist, for one year and some months. I am utterly unconscious of having given him any provocation; indeed I am guiltless of having heard his name, till it was coupled with the Satirist. He has, therefore, no reason to complain, and I dare say that, like Sir Fretful Plagiary, he is rather pleased than otherI have now mentioned all who have done me the honour to notice me and mine, that is, my bear and my book, except the editor of the Satirist, who, it seems, is a gentleman. God wot! I wish he could impart a little of his gentility to his subordinate scribblers. I hear that Mr JERNINGHAM is about to take up the cudgels for his Mæcenas, Lord Carlisle: I hope not; he was one of the few who, in the very short intercourse I had

wise.

J'en

PREFACE.

THE following poem was written, for the most part, amidst the scenes which it attempts to describe. It was begun in Albania; and the parts relative to Spain' and Portugal were composed from the author's observations in those countries. Thus much it may be necessary to state for the correctness of the descriptions. The scenes attempted to be sketched are in Spain, Portugal, Epirus, Acarnania, and Greece, There for the present the poem stops: its reception will determine whether the author may venture to conduct his readers to the capital of the East, through Ionia and, Phrygia: these two cantos are merely experimental.

A fictitious character is introduced for the sake of giving some connexion to the piece; which, however, makes no pretension to regularity. It has been suggested to me by friends, on whose opinions I set a high value, that in this fictitious character, «Childe Barold,» I may incur the suspicion of having intended some real personage: this I beg leave, once for all, to disclaim

Harold is the child of imagination, for the purpose I have stated. In some very trivial particulars, and those merely local, there might be grounds for such a notion; but in the main points, I should hope, none whatever. It is almost superfluous to mention that the appellation «Childe,» as «Childe Waters,» «Childe Childers,» etc., is used as more consonant with the old structure of versification which I have adopted. The « Good Night,» in the beginning of the first canto, was suggested by «Lord Maxwell's Good Night,» in the Border Minstrelsy, edited by Mr Scott.

With the different poems which have been published on Spanish subjects, there may be found some slight coincidence in the first part, which treats of the peninsula, but it can only be casual; as, with the exception of a few concluding stanzas, the whole of this poem was written in the Levant.

The stanza of Spenser, according to one of our most successful poets, admits of every variety. Dr Beattie makes the following observation: «Not long ago I began a poem in the style and stanza of Spenser, in which I propose to give full scope to my inclination,

V.

For he through sin's long labyrinth had run, Nor made atonement when he did amiss, Had sigh'd to many, though he loved but one, And that loved one, alas! could ne'er be his. Ah, happy she! to 'scape from him whose kiss Had been pollution unto aught so chaste; Who soon had left her charms for vulgar bliss, And spoild her goodly lands to gild his waste, Nor calm domestic peace had ever deign'd to taste.

XI.

His house, his home, his heritage, his lands, The laughing dames in whom he did delight, Whose large blue eyes, fair locks, and snowy hands, Might shake the saintship of an anchorite, And long had fed his youthful appetite; His goblets brimmed with every costly wine, And all that mote to luxury invite, Without a sigh he left, to cross the brine, And traverse Paynim shores, and pass earth's central line.