or modified, should fail to exhibit some traces of that character which was essential to his original design. Of that character, indeed, we are neither willing nor competent to undertake the defence. The hero of Lord Byron's poetry appears to be a compound of the qualities which distinguish the Achilles of Homer, united with those which are peculiar to the knights of romance. But these knights, though condemned to maintain, at all hazards, that the lady of their choice was, exclusively, a perfect model of beauty and excellence, did not, in other respects, very materially differ from the rest of mankind. Their love was placed under the guard of their pride, and their pride had usually enough to do to preserve them from inconstancy. But, in the hero of Lord Byron, the passion of love is represented as a virtue, which, once implanted in the breast, becomes immutably fixed there amidst a host of vices, all of which it is able, not only to resist, but to overcome. Conrad is represented by the poet as a selfish, haughty, merciless villain, and he states himself to have broken all the ties of society, and to have shaken off every sentiment of religion with such a man, therefore, it seems impossible that any reader should sympathize; yet, in truth, every reader will sympathize with Conrad, because we cannot help forgetting his motives, whilst we contemplate a conduct apparently dictated by magnanimity, tenderness, and generosity.

To promote this illusion seems to be the object of the whole poem. Even at the outset the reader is presented with a picture of the pleasures attendant on the life of a pirate, without any mention of its vices, or of the misery which it may produce. The crowds assembled on the beach of the island, whether active, or unemployed, are exhibited to our view cheerful and contented, whilst the sufferings of their captives are carefully concealed. If we ascend to the fairy dwelling of Medora, surrounded by crystal fountains and fragrant groves of fruit-trees, and behold their lovely and accomplished mistress preparing for her lord his simple, but delicious banquet, and welcoming him with an innocent and tender affection, in which his heart appears to sympathize with equal sincerity, we cannot help taking part with the amiable possessors of this earthly Paradise, against the invaders, who had prepared to violate such an asylum. We cannot help wishing success to the gallant champion of beauty; we hail his first victory; we applaud his rashness in rescuing Gulnare; we admire his firmness in prison; we rejoice in that deliverance, which he disdains to purchase, even by a venial crime; and deplore, most sincerely, the disappointment which attends him on his return. If we forgive, and almost love, the criminal Gulnare, it is because the awe, with which Conrad inspires her, suddenly revives in her breast those feelings of exquisitely feminine delicacy,

which her guilt had appeared to smother. Upon the whole, then, it is only after some recollection that we acquiesce in the truth of a remark which has been made on this poem, that Lord Byron 'has adorned a merciless corsair on a rock in the Mediterranean, with every virtue under heaven-except common honesty.'

Now, whether this, or any other incongruities of the same kind, which may be formed in Lord Byron's series of tales, arise, as we have supposed, from the original plan of Childe Harold, or from any peculiarity in the writer's fundamental notions of morality, it is equally certain that his poetical powers are very great and various. With his subjects we have been often displeased; his language, we think, is not unfrequently obscure, and his versification careless: but he seems to us to possess, to a degree which must always command admiration, that originality which is the sure attribute of genius. He views with a keen and searching attention, even the most common and trivial objects that he describes, and surprises us by detecting what had escaped the observation of all former spectators. Novelty is always captivating, whether it be thus elicited from things with which we are most familiar, and which we now behold, as it were, in a microscope; or whether new scenes be brought within our view, as by telescopic approximation, and cleared from the obscurity in which their distance had involved them. Of the brilliant skies and variegated landscapes of Greece every one has formed to himself a general notion, from having contemplated them through the hazy atmosphere of some prose narration; but, in Lord Byron's poetry, every image is distinct and glowing, as if it were illuminated by its native sunshine; and in the figures which people the landscape, we behold, not only the general form and costume, but the countenance, and the attitude, and the play of features and of gesture accompanying, and indicating, the sudden impulses of momentary feelings. The magic of colouring by which this is effected is, perhaps, the most striking evidence of this poet's talent; in the dark shades of his pictures we think him much less happy. We are aware that our opinion may be very fairly controverted, and that it is in direct opposition to that of another critical tribunal; but before we state the little that we have to say in our defence, we are compelled to enter our protest against some new canons of criticism, on which the decision of that co-ordinate tribunal is principally founded.

It is contended that poetry is destined to complete a certain cycle or great revolution, accompanying and dependant on a correspondent cycle of the feelings as well as of the manners of society. That, originating in times of turbulence and anarchy, it was at first

coarse and vehement;-then pompous and stately;-then affectedly refined and ingenious, and finally gay, witty, discursive, and familiar. That at this stage of refinement, however, mankind become disgusted at the heartless frivolity of their gratifications, and acquire a longing for strong emotions, so that poetry, following the current of popular opinion, is compelled to seek for subjects in the manners of ruder ages, to revive the feats of chivalry, and the loves of romance; or to wander, in search of unbridled passion, amongst nations yet imperfectly civilized. Lastly, that this is the period at which we are now arrived: that a growing appetite for turbulent emotion is the peculiar characteristic of the age; that we are no longer satisfied with viewing the mere effects of strong passion, but require the passion itself to be dissected before our eyes; and that Lord Byron, having surpassed all his contemporaries in this species of moral anatomy, has, of course, attained the pinnacle of popular favour.

Now we venture to contend that the poetical cycle here described is purely imaginary; and that if any indications of it were, indeed, discoverable in the history of our own poetry, it would not be fair to deduce, from them, a correspondent cycle of the national' appetite' for any sort of emotions. Language and manners are, from age to age, either progressively improved, or at least changed, and the trace of such changes may be found in the works of contemporary poets; but the passions of mankind are always the same, and always capable of being called out by a proper degree of excitement. If centuries have passed away since the birth of Shakspeare, does it follow that an appetite for those emotions, which he alone was able to rouse, lay dormant during the interval, and has only revived within the last twenty years? We greatly doubt the fact, as well as the existence of the symptoms which are adduced in proof of it. The last twenty years have, doubtless, been wonderfully fertile of crimes and miseries, and there have been some persons in this country who have hailed, with joy and praise, every step of that desolating tyranny, which threatened to spread over the world, and awakened in its progress all those strong emotions which are pronounced to be so delectable. But these persons were not very numerous, and certainly not legitimate arbiters of taste, or of poetical talent. In the whole remainder of the nation, we believe that the horrid realities, which passed before their eyes, did not raise any appetite for scenes of mimic terror; and if Mr. Scott, Mr. Southey, and Lord Byron have transported their readers to the ages of romance, to the wilds of America, or to the shores of Greece, we suspect that they all followed the impulse of their own studies or habits, without dreaming that they thus com

pleted a poetical cycle, or ministered to any taste or appetite peculiar to the present age or country.

Without dwelling any longer on the general objections to this new and fanciful theory, we now proceed to the point immediately at issue. It is contended, on one hand, that for the purpose of suiting the poetical taste of the present times, the minds of the great agents must be unmasked for us-and all the anatomy of their throbbing bosoms laid open to our gaze.' We think, on the contrary, that this anatomical operation is essentially unpoetical; and that therefore Lord Byron, who is emphatically styled the 'searcher of dark bosoms,' is least attractive, and least popular, whenever he attempts to execute this special office. We do not mean to question the extent to which the analysis of mind, or of sensation, is capable of being carried, or to vilipend the delight attendant on such researches; we only contend that the pleasures of intellect are materially different from the pleasures of illusion, that the two are incompatible; and that the writer, who seeks to excite any emotion, will never effect this by attempting to analyze its nature and origin, but must content himself with describing its effects, because it is only with these that his readers can be supposed to be conversant. Every passion of the soul has its visible symptoms by which the correspondent feeling of the observer is instantly awakened; and it is only by the delineation of these symptoms, so correct as to be recognised by the simplest reader, and to produce a momentary illusion, and to call out by means of the pictured image, the same train of sympathies as would have been excited by the reality, that the poet can possess himself of our imagination and become master of our emotions. The secret sensibility which lurks within our bosoms, which pervades the whole animated frame, and transmits through it the indications of joy or grief, of pleasure or pain, but of which the excess is suffocating and unutterable, cannot itself become the subject of description. To attempt such description is, we think, to exceed the legitimate pretensions of poetry, and to invade the province of metaphysics. On this ground we object to some passages in the Corsair, which are intended to represent the prison-thoughts of Conrad. On similar grounds we have more strongly objected to the Giaour.-But enough of this. We have stated our opinion, and leave the question for the decision of our readers.

ART. XII. Researches in Greece, by William Martin Leake. London, 1814. 4to. pp. xix. 472.

TH

HE exclusion of Englishmen from those parts of the continent were which were formerly the chief objects of inquiry to the curious, has of late years induced many of our travellers to direct their attention to a country highly interesting from the wrecks which it contains of ancient grandeur, and from the contrast between its former state of glory and its present degradation. No man is now accounted a traveller, who has not bathed in the Eurotas and tasted the olives of Attica; while, on the other hand, it is an introduction to the best company, and a passport to literary distinction, to be a member of the Athenian Club,' and to have scratched one's name upon a fragment of the Parthenon. We are far from wishing to speak irreverently of this growing fashion; although one mischief resulting from it is, that superficial observation is apt to pass current for sterling knowledge; for who would presume to call in question his acquaintance with the history, customs and language of Greece, who is known to have measured the circumference of the Acropolis with his own hands, and to have topographized three or four of the plains recorded in history? It must, however, be confessed, that although the knowledge which we possess of the state of modern Greece is neither very copious, nor very interesting, the deficiency is rather to be ascribed to the nature of the subject, than to any want of research in those who have treated of it for of a country, which forfeited its political existence before the Christian era, and has ever since been passing from one master to another; of a country, whose inhabitants have been for ages debased by the most abject slavery and the grossest superstition, and by an intermixture with the refuse of other nations; what can we expect to learn? A people without independence, without literature, without national feelings, present but an unpromising field of inquiry. Unlike the magnificent fragments of his own temples and porticos, which give plain, though melancholy indication of what they once were, the modern Greek resembles in no respect, if we except the contour of his face, and a few unimportant customs, the race of heroes and sages from whom he boasts his descent. Servility, deceit, and superstition, are qualities for which he is perhaps rather to be pitied than condemned, as resulting naturally from the state of degradation in which he is held. National and moral debasement ever go hand in hand. The debasement of intellect follows of course. The native of the Morea scarcely differs more from his ancestor in spirit and consequence than he does in language; for in spite of the absurd com