prayer of the deceased in my behalf for the united glory of Homer, Cæsar, and Napoleon, could such be accumulated upon a living head. Do me at least the justice to suppose that

Video meliora proboque,

however the deteriora sequor may have been applied to my conduct. I have the honour to be your obliged and obedient servant, "BYRON."

It is melancholy to think of the debasement and inconsistencies of such a mind as Lord Byron's, and a mind with such capacities for moral and intellectual excellence. With how much deeper feeling, might he have adopted the words of a less gifted poet

O gracious God! how far have we
Profaned thy heavenly gift of Poesy?

Made prostitute and profligate the Muse,
Debased to each obscene and impious use.

Before the date of the letter just quoted, he had composed his Cain; and, previously even to that work, he had abandoned himself in his Don Juan, to a course of writing, which left nothing to be hoped.

Of these works we shall say but little. The world, as has been already remarked, had begun to grow weary of Byron's monotonous wretchedness; the dark cloud which had enveloped him was dispersing, and no longer hid from view the form and lineaments of a man like other men; the romantic conceptions, which had been entertained concerning him, were assuming a tinge of the ridiculous; his life had been such, and his

character had become so deeply marked and disfigured, that much of his former style of sentiment was too obviously incongruous with either; and his powers seem to have been weakened, both by the moral and physical effects of his vices. Their influence tended also to prevent that confidence in the sympathy of others, which was necessary to the successful exertion of his genius. But he lived in the eyes of men, and their gaze was still to be fixed upon himself in some way or another. If he could not be the first of poets, he could be the most unprincipled and the most daring. It was in this state of mind, that he produced his Don Juan and his Cain, and some of the other works of his

later years.

His thorough admirers have praised even hese. But unless an age of deeper darkness

and evil, than has yet been known, is about to settle upon the world, the prevailing sentiments concerning them will soon silence all dissentient voices. His Cain is a poem which has little in it, that is dramatic, except its external form. It is an attack upon the goodness of God, on the ground of the existence of evil. It represents him as the tyrant of the universe, delighting in the parasitical praises of his meaner creatures; but whom all nobler spirits must regard with defiance. It is idle to say, by way of apology, that this attack upon the Divinity is broken up into paragraphs, with the names of Cain and Lucifer prefixed to them; since what has been stated is the only sentiment of the work, unanswered and uncontradicted, to the impression of which everything is made to contribute. It accords but too well with

earlier expressions of the feelings of the author. We might justify what has been said, by extracts from the poem; but it would be necessary to quote passages which no light occasion would excuse one for obtruding upon notice.

We read the two first cantos of Don Juan shortly after their appearance. The mass of buffoonery and profligacy which followed, we had not seen till about to prepare the present article. It was the last product of Byron's mind. The great merit aimed at in the work, is drollery. The author drolls upon everything; giving, for instance, in the first canto, a funny account of some shipwrecked sailors driven through hunger to devour one of their companions. It is rambling and incoherent, with frequent disregard of grammar and prosody. It furnishes,