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ration, and gentlest transition to an enjoyment of those of heaven."* The want of real feeling, in many of the descriptions of Byron, is often not merely a deficiency, but makes itself felt as the cause of artificial sentiment, an unnatural straining after effect, and harsh and incongruous images.

But he has great vividness of conception, and great power of expression; and where the aspects of nature corresponded to the gloom and storminess of his own mind, there is sometimes a burst of poetry, which will never be excelled. The thunder storm among the Alps-every one recollects it.

The sky is changed!—and such a change! Oh night, And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong,

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* This passage is from a letter of Pope to Miss M. Blount; one of those letters on which Bowles has founded a gross attack upon the morals of that eminent man. The defect of good sense, in Mr. Bowles' reasoning on this subject, is almost as remarkable as his strange malignity against the dead.

Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light
Of a dark eye in woman! Far along,
From peak to peak, the rattling crags among,
Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud,
But every mountain now hath found a tongue,
And Jura answers, through her misty shroud,
Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!

Nothing can be more magnificent. There is here no imperfect personification. The mastery of the poet's spell is complete; and the thunder and the mountains are alive.

We may feel more fully the wonderful power of this passage, by comparing it with another description of the same kind, which has been, perhaps, more celebrated than any other, that of Virgil, in his first Georgic.

Ipse Pater, mediâ nimborum in nocte, coruscâ
Fulmina molitur dextrâ ; quo maxima motu
Terra tremit; fugere feræ; et mortalia corda
Per gentes humilis stravit pavor; ille flagranti

Aut Atho, aut Rhodopen, aut alta Ceraunia telo Dejicit; ingeminant austri et densissimus imber; Nunc nemora ingenti vento, nunc littora, plangunt.*

It may be curious to observe, that the superiority of the former passage arises, in part, from its greater conformity to nature. The thunder storm of Virgil, by which the whole earth is shaken, and mortal hearts prostrated with fear through the nations, is far too extensive and powerful in its effects.

* Of such a passage, it is in vain to attempt to give a satisfactory translation. The following is somewhat more literal than any other we have seen.

Amid a night of storms, the Almighty Sire

Wields the fierce thunder, his right arm on fire;
The huge earth trembles; the wild beasts have fled;
Throughout the nations, men are bowed with dread.
He, with his flaming dart, meanwhile strikes down
The crest of Rhodope, or Athos' crown,
Or the Ceraupian summits. The deep roar
Of wind and rain redoubles. On the shore,
The raving billows dash with ceaseless sound,
And groaning forests answer far around.

His description does not give us that feeling of reality, for the want of which no poetical language can compensate. In addition to this, Virgil's sole agent is Jupiter; and we do not perceive why he acts. There is no moral character connected with the display of what may be called his physical power. The conception, for anything which appears, may be that of a capricious tyrant. But in the verses of Byron, the phenomena of nature are indued with forms of life, fully corresponding to the powerful impressions, which they are adapted to produce.

In the passage from Byron, it is true, that" the light of a dark eye in woman," is out of place, not being in accordance with the gigantic sublimity and force of the images, among which it is introduced. The description, likewise, is continued through

another stanza of inferior merit, and which concludes with an imagination, than which there is scarcely anything more burlesque in his Beppo or Don Juan

-and now the glee

Of the loud hills shakes with their mountain mirth,
As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth.

The disproportion and incongruity between the powers of Byron's mind, and especially the want of strong moral sentiment, corresponding to and sustaining the vigour of his conceptions, appear equally in other passages of his writings, as in his descriptions of nature. His force is sometimes that of a blind Cyclops, aimless and purposeless. Without religious faith, regarding himself and others as mere beings of this world, taking pleasure in representing himself as

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