But, present still, though now unseen! To temper the deceitful ray. And mute are timbrel, trump, and horn. [Song from the Pirate.] Love wakes and weeps O for music's softest numbers, For Beauty's dream, Soft as the pillow of her slumbers! Through groves of palm Sigh gales of balm, Fire-flies on the air are wheeling; While through the gloom Comes soft perfume, The distant beds of flowers revealing. O wake and live! No dreams can give A shadowed bliss the real excelling; From lattice peep, And list the tale that love is telling! LORD BYRON. The chivalry of Scott, the philosophy of Wordsworth, the abstract theory and imagination of Southey, and even the lyrical beauties of Moore and Campbell, were for a time eclipsed by this new and greater light. The rank, youth, and misfortunes of Byron, his exile from England, the mystery which he loved to throw around his history and feelings, the apparent depth of his sufferings Scott retreated from poetry into the wide and and attachments, and his very misanthropy and open field of prose fiction as the genius of Byron scepticism (relieved by bursts of tenderness and began to display its strength and fertility. A new, pity, and by the incidental expression of high and or at least a more finished, nervous, and lofty style holy feelings), formed a combination of personal of poetry was introduced by the noble author, who circumstances in aid of the legitimate effects of his was as much a mannerist as Scott, but of a different passionate and graceful poetry, which is unparalleled school. He excelled in painting the strong and in the history of modern literature. Such a result gloomy passions of our nature, contrasted with is even more wonderful than the laureled honours feminine softness and delicacy. Scott, intent upon awarded to Virgil and Petrarch, if we consider the the development of his plot, and the chivalrous difference between ancient and modern manners, machinery of his Gothic tales, is seldom personally and the temperament of the northern nations compresent to the reader. Byron delighted in self-pared with that of the sunny south. Has the portraiture, and could stir the depths of the human spell yet broke? Has the glory faded into the heart. His philosophy of life was false and perni- common light of day?' Undoubtedly the later cious; but the splendour of the artist concealed the writings of the noble bard helped to dispel the deformity of his design. Parts were so nobly illusion. To competent observers, these works added finished, that there was enough for admiration to to the impression of Byron's powers as an original rest upon, without analysing the whole. He con- poet, but they tended to exorcise the spirit of reducted his readers through scenes of surpassing mance from his name and history; and what Des beauty and splendour-by haunted streams and Juan failed to effect, was accomplished by the mountains, enriched with the glories of ancient biography of Moore. His poetry, however, must poetry and valour; but the same dark shadow was always have a powerful effect on minds of poetical ever by his side-the same scorn and mockery of and warm sensibilities. If it is a rank unweeded human hopes and ambition. The sententious force garden,' it also contains glorious fruits and plants and elevation of his thoughts and language, his of celestial seed. The art of the poet will be a eloquent expression of sentiment, and the mournful study for the ambitious few; his genius will be a and solemn melody of his tender and pathetic pas-source of wonder and delight to all who love to consages, seemed, however, to do more than atone for template the workings of human passion, in solitude his want of moral truth and reality. The man and and society, and the rich effects of taste and inthe poet were so intimately blended, and the spec-spiration. tacle presented by both was so touching, mysterious, The incidents of Byron's life may be briefly and lofty, that Byron concentrated a degree of lated. He was born in Holles Street, London, interest and anxiety on his successive public ap- the 22d of January 1788, the only son of Captain pearances, which no author ever before was able to John Byron of the Guards, and Catherine Gorden |