written, but in a very discouraging manner. He would have nothing to do with the subject, we should all go down together, he said, 'So,' quoting St. Paul, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die;'-he felt satisfied in his creed, for it was better to sleep than to wake."*

Such as we have seen, being the character of Lord Byron, it could not be expected, that his poetry would have much tendency to raise and improve mankind, much moral beauty, or much, that could be agreeable to our higher and purer feelings. It has not. The energy of his passions, and his intense egotism, made him a poet. They demanded for their expression the vehement and piercing tones, which are sometimes uttered in his verses. He excels in the exhibition

• pp. 90.

of pride, resolution, obstinacy, and solitary No one could express

self dependence.

with more force the corroding reflections of a perverted and degraded mind; nor add to the bitterness with which he pours out his loathing of life, and what were regarded by him as its purposes. He puts forth the whole strength of his soul in giving a voice to fierce and wicked passions, in the agony of their self inflicted torment. There are few passages, for instance, in his poetry, more powerful than the confession of the Giaour.

Now nothing left to love or hate,
No more with hope or pride elate,
I'd rather be the thing that crawls
Most noxious o'er a dungeon's walls,
Than pass my dull, unvarying days
Condemn'd to meditate and gaze.

Yet sometimes, with remorse, in vain
I wish she had not loved again.

She died-I dare not tell thee how ;
But look-'tis written on my brow!
There read of Cain the curse and crime,
In characters unworn by time.

He died too in the battle broil.

I search'd, but vainly search'd, to find
The workings of a wounded mind;
Each feature of that sullen corse

Betray'd his rage, but no remorse.
Oh, what had Vengeance given to trace
Despair upon his dying face!

The late repentance of that hour,
When Penitence hath lost her power
To tear one terror from the grave,
And will not soothe, and cannot save.

And she was lost-and yet I breathed,
But not the breath of human life;
A serpent round my heart was wreathed,
And stung my every thought to strife.
Alike all time, abhorr'd all place,
Shuddering I shrunk from Nature's face,
Where every hue that charm'd before
The blackness of my bosom wore.

The rest thou dost already know,
And all my sins, and half my wo.

Tell me no more of fancy's gleam,
No, father no, 'twas not a dream;
Alas! the dreamer first must sleep,
I only watch'd, and wish'd to weep;
But could not, for my burning brow
Throbb'd to the very brain as now:
I wish'd but for a single tear,

As something welcome, new, and dear,
I wish'd it then, I wish it still,.
Despair is stronger than my will.
Waste not thine orison, despair
Is mightier than thy pious prayer ;
I would not, if I might, be blest,
I want no paradise, but rest.

A great part of what is most forcible in his poetry consists in the display of his own passions, indulged in imagination without restraint. Throughout almost the whole of it, there is an exhibition, direct or indirect, of his personal feelings and character, either

such as they really were, or most commonly modified in such a manner, as seemed to him best adapted to give others that conception of him, which he wished them to entertain; as of an individual, who, as he describes one of his impersonations of himself, his Lara,

-soared beyond, or sunk beneath,

The men with whom he felt condemned to breathe,

And longed by good or ill to separate

Himself from all, who shared his mortal state.

The characteristics described, mark strongly all his higher poems, such as the last two cantos of Childe Harold, Manfred, the Corsair, and Lara. When the "strong vigour" of his egotism was not" working at the root," his poetry is often imperfectly conceived and expressed, tame, extravagant, sometimes heavily elaborate, and sometimes