Another morn-another bids them seek,
And shout his name till echo waxeth weak;
Mount-grotto-cavern-valley searched in vain,
They find on shore a sea-boat's broken chain:
Their hope revives-they follow o'er the main.
"Tis idle all-moons roll on moons away,

Aud Conrad comes not-came not since that day:
Nor trace nor tidings of his doom declare

Where lives his grief or perished his despair!

Long mourned his band whom none could mourn beside;
And fair the monument they gave his bride:
For him they raise not the recording stone-
His death yet dubious, deeds too widely known;
He left a Corsair's name to other times,

Linked with one virtue, and a thousand crimes.

Many conjectures have been made as to the origin of this poem. It has been referred to Sir Walter Scott's Rokeby,' and to twenty other sources, without the most distant reason upon which to found such arbitrary and unnecessary attempts at a charge of plagiarism. The character of Conrad, not in itself very original, is treated in so powerful and original a manner, that Lord Byron is no less the author of it, in the proper sense of the word, than if noue of the resemblance with other characters existed. It would be just as fair and reasonable to say that Shakspeare was a plagiarist, because the characters of Hamlet and Macbeth had been handled before he made them his own.

Lord Byron mentions, in a note to the poem, a curious fact connected with the history of Bishop Blackbourne.

'There is something mysterious in the history and character of Dr. Blackbourne. The former is but imperfectly known; and report has even asserted he was a buccaneer: and that one of his brethren in that profession having asked, on his arrival in England, what had become of his old chum, Blackbourne, was answered, he is archbishop of York. We are informed that Blackbourne was installed sub-dean of Exeter in 1694, which office he resigned in 1702; but after his successor Lewis Barnet's death, in 1704, be regained it. In the following year he became dean; and, in 1714, held with it the archdeanery of Cornwall. He was consecrated bishop of Exeter, February 24, 1716; and translated to York, November 28, 1724, as a reward, according to court scandal, for uniting George I. to the Duchess of Munster. This, however, appears to have been an unfounded calumny. As archbishop

he behaved with great prudence, and was equally respectable as the guardian of the revenues of the see. Rumour whispered he retained the vices of his youth, and that a passion for the fair sex formed an item in the list of his weaknesses; but, so far from being convicted by seventy witnesses, he does not appear to have been directly criminated by one. In short, I look upon these aspersions as the effects of mere malice. How is it possible a buccaneer should have been so good a scholar as Blackbourne certainly was? He who had so perfect a knowledge of the classics, (particularly of the Greek tragedians,) as to be able to read them with the same ease as he could Shakspeare, must have taken great pains to acquire the learned languages; and have had both leisure and good masters. But he was undoubtedly educated at Christ-church College, Oxford. He is allowed to have been a pleasant mau this, however, was turned against him, by its being said "he gained more hearts than souls."

In the dedication prefixed to this poem Lord Byron had frightened the reading public' out of their wits by a threat that he would not send any other work into the world for a long period. If he really meant to keep his word when he made this announcement, some circumstances which we cannot regret soon induced him to alter his resolution; and he published in the course of the same year a poem, under the title of 'Lara.' It came into the world prefixed to a very beautiful little tale, called Jacqueline,' by Mr. Rogers, to which Lord Byron paid the compliment of saying that it ought to have taken place of his own, and regretted that the more tenacious courtesy of his friend did not permit him to place it where the judgment of the reader, concurring with his own, would have suggested its more appropriate station.'

'Lara' is supposed, as appears to us with great reason, to be a continuation of the Corsair.' It either is or it ought to be so. Abrupt and dark as is the termination of the Corsair,' the beginning of 'Lara' is not less so. The former ends with the disappearance of Conrad: Nor trace nor tidings of his doom declare

Where lives his grief or perished his despair!

The latter comménces with an account of the return of Lara, after a long absence caused by circumstances which no one can explain, and spent no one can tell how nor where:

The Serfs are glad through Lara's wide domain,
And Slavery half forgets her feudal chain;

He, their unhoped, but unforgotten lord,
The long self-exiled chieftain, is restored :
There be bright faces in the busy hall,

Bowls on the board, and banners on the wall;
Far chequering o'er the pictured window plays
The unwonted faggots' hospitable blaze;
And gay retainers gather round the hearth,
With tongues all loudness, and with eyes all mirth

The chief of Lara is returned again:

And why had Lara crossed the bounding main?
Left by his sire, too young such loss to know,
Lord of himself;-that heritage of woe,
That fearful empire which the human breast
But holds to rob the heart within of rest!—
With none to check, and few to point in time
The thousand paths that slope the way to crime,
Then, when he most required commandment, then
Had Lara's daring boyhood governed men.
It skills not, boots not, step by step to trace
His youth through all the mazes of its race;
Short was the course his restlessness had run,
But long enough to leave him half undone.

Ou his return he is accompanied by only one attendant, a page, of foreign birth and tender years. He gives no explanation of his past travel, shows a disinclination to answer questions, and bears on all occasions a lofty and repelling demeanour :

'Tis quickly seen,

Whate'er he be, 'twas not what he had been:
That brow in furrowed lines had fixed at last,
And spake of passions, but of passion past:
The pride, but not the fire, of early days,
Coldness of mien, and carelessness of praise;
A high demeanour, and a glance that took
Their thoughts from others by a single look;
And that sarcastic levity of tongue,

The stinging of a heart the world hath stung,
That darts in seeming playfulness around,

Aud makes those feel that will not own the wound;

All these seemed his, and something more beneath
Than glance could well reveal or accent breathe.
Ambition, glory, love, the common aim,

That some can conquer, and that all would claim,
Within his breast appeared no more to strive,
Yet seeined as lately they had been alive;

And some deep feeling it were vain to trace
At moments lightened o'er his livid face.

His rank and wealth of course give him a passport to the society of the nobles of his country:

Not unrejoiced to see him once again,

Warm was his welcome to the haunts of men;

Born of high lineage, linked in high command,
He mingled with the Magnates of his land;
Joined the carousals of the great and gay,
And saw them smile or sigh their hours away:
But still he only saw, and did not share
The common pleasure or the general care;
He did not follow what they all pursued,
With hope still baffled, still to be renewed;
Nor shadowy honour, nor substantial gain,
Nor beauty's preference, and the rival's pain:
Around him sone mysterious circle thrown
Repelled approach, and showed him still alone;
Upon his eye sate something of reproof,
That kept at least frivolity aloof;

And things more timid, that beheld him near,
In silence gazed, or whispered mutual fear;
And they, the wiser, friendlier few, confest

They deemed him better than his air exprest.

In the mean time his strange habits, his fits of mental abstraction, his evident suffering under some mental agony, give rise to whispers and suggestions among his household, who deem, in that charitable criticism which servants exercise over the actions of those whose bread they eat, that it must be some crime 'unwhipped of justice' which thus shakes his nature. He is accustomed to walk by night in an old dark gallery, hung with the portraits of his ancestors. From this gallery the domestics faucy they have heard unearthly voices issue, while that of their lord has been in communion with them. At

length an incident occurs which confirms their suspicions. The decription of this event is instinct with all the beauty and force which are the strong characteristics of Lord Byron's poetry:

It was the night-and Lara's glassy stream
The stars are studding, each with imaged beam:
So calm, the waters scarcely seem to stray,
And yet they glide like happiness away ;
Reflecting far and fairy-like on high

The immortal lights that live along the sky :
Its banks are fringed with many a goodly tree,
And flowers the fairest that may feast the bee;
Such in her chaplet infant Dian wove,

And Innocence would offer to her love.

These deck the shore; the waves their chanuel make
In windings bright and mazy like the snake.

All was so still, so soft, in earth and air,
You scarce would start to meet a spirit there;
Secure that nought of evil could delight
To walk in such a scene, on such a night!

It was a moment only for the good :

So Lara deemed, nor longer there he stood,
But turn'd in silence to his castle gate;
Such scene his soul no more could contemplate :
Such scene reminded him of other days,

Of skies more cloudless, moons of purer blaze-
Of nights more soft and frequent, hearts that now---
No-no-the storm may beat upon his brow,
Unfelt unsparing-but a night like this,
A night of beauty, mocked such breast as his.

He turned within his solitary hall,

And his high shadow shot along the wall;
There were the painted forms of other times,
'Twas all they left of virtues or of crimes,
Save vague tradition; and the gloomy vaults
That bid their dust, their foibles, and their faults;
And half a column of the pompous page,
That speeds the specious tale from age to age;
Where history's pen its praise or blame supplies,
And lies like truth, and still most truly lies.