standing he had been so bitterly assailed by its author, took occasion to show his magnanimity, his contempt, or his policy, in an article in which it was highly praised, though containing passages not adapted to gratify one, to whom celebrity, in any shape, was not acceptable.

Among the minor faults of Childe Harold, may be mentioned the puerile affectation of its title; and the occasional introduction of obsolete words into a poem essentially modern in its character. In this, as in Byron's other works, the language is not always grammatical, nor are words always used in a correct meaning. Some passages are obscure from indistinctness of thought, and others from awkwardness of expression. In Childe Harold there is another fault, characteristic likewise of some of Lord

Byron's other writings. It is the want of

coherence, of mutual relation of parts, and of general purpose in the poem. His transitions are singularly abrupt and harsh. The train of thought, or feeling, in which we had been indulging, is snapt without warning; and something wholly foreign from it comes in succession. The associations, which introduce one part after another, seem often to be purely accidental. Subjects, which have no natural connexion, are thus brought together in strange confusion. The effect is almost as bewildering and unpleasant, as if a volume of sonnets were printed as a single work. It is a poem, which resembles the walls of some modern erection, composed in part of ancient marbles,-friezes, inscriptions, and relievos,-placed without order. Lord Byron "told me," says Medwin,

"that when he wrote, he neither knew nor cared what was coming next." This, adds Medwin," is the true inspiration of the poet." The doctrine is comfortable for

those who are aspiring to be poets; but, as yet, it is supported only by the practice of Lord Byron, and the authority of Captain Medwin.

Of the life led by Lord Byron in London, after the publication of the first two cantos of Childe Harold, there are statements and details enough in Dallas and Medwin. Courted by trifling and profligate meu, and by fashionable and dissolute women, he indulged, without restraint of any sort, in the vices to which he was exposed. The view that is given of fashionable society in London, after every allowance which the case may require, is such as should make us

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thankful, that we, of the new world, are free from its folly and impurity. He who chooses to look for anything in that poem, may find a commentary upon the accounts of Dallas and Medwin, in some of the cantos of Don Juan. "I had the reputation," said Byron, "of being a great rake, and was a great dandy;" and of this sort of reputation, he is reported to have been as vain, as of the fame of being a great poet. In January, 1815, he was married to Miss Millbank. The next year, he deserted his wife, and his native land. He subsequently inherited a fortune, as the husband of the lady whom he had abandoned ;* and seems

Medwin reports him to have said, on two different occasions, that when he paid back his wife's portion, he added a sum of equal amount viz. £10,000. This is stated to be false by Lord Byron's friend, the Westminster Reviewer; who likewise contradicts another account of Byron's generosity in voluntarily relinquishing the half of Lady Noel's fortune after her death. According to Medwin, he said, "I might have claimed all the fortune for my life, if I had chosen to have done so." One may reasonably doubt whether all this incorrectness is to be charged on Medwin.

to have felt no hesitation about regarding the legal title which he had to it, as giving him a moral right to its possession. He continued to persecute Lady Byron after their separation. He dragged her before the world in his various works, for the sake of changing, if possible, the strong current of public sentiment, and directing it against her. He endeavoured to represent himself as the one, who "had suffered things to be forgiven," bitter wrongs; but whose heavy curse should be forgiveness.* At the same

time, with the disregard of consistency, which marks his writings and character, he announced that he married without love; that even while he stood at the altar, the vision of another came over his mind, and

See Childe Harold, Cant. IV. stan. 135.