steed, welcome its roar, and abandon itself to the storm; and the feeling which this is adapted to excite, is rendered deeper by the accompanying expression of suffering and solitariness.

The two last cantos of Childe Harold display much higher poetical powers, than the two preceding. Their author, likewise, has chosen to exhibit his character under a somewhat different and less unamiable aspect. There is more of moral feeling; there is sometimes, even an approach to religious sentiment.

All heaven and earth are still-though not in sleep,
But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;
And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep;—
All heaven and earth are still; from the high host
Of stars, to the lull'd lake and mountain coast,
All is concentred in a life intense,

Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,

But hath a part of being, and a sense
Of that which is of all Creator and defence.

The admiration and flattery which he had received, the court which had been paid him, the real kindness he had experienced, the readiness of every one to allow his claims to their full extent, and to forget his offences, and the high rank which he had attained as a popular writer, had all contributed to soften the asperity of his passions, and to take off the edge of his misanthropy. At the same time, when in the full sunshine of favour, he had darkened his own prospects, he had, by his misconduct, separated himself from society and from his country, and become a just object of general reprobation. He had, through his evil passions, humbled himself even in the eye of the world. He could not but feel his situation; and he

appears, likewise, to have felt something of compunction, and to have admitted the entrance of better and more serious thoughts, than those with which he had been familiar. It was not for one so circumstanced to assume a tone of defiance, and to talk, very broadly, of contemning his fellow men; for society had passed on him a sentence of exile; and he could not glory in what had become an involuntary separation. The world, however, was still wooing him back to its favour; he was still "begged to be glad, entreated to aspire;" and to secure that favour, which was his life, he was stimulated to a more splendid exertion of his powers, and led to accommodate himself more to the moral sentiments of mankind. The last two cantos of Childe Harold, therefore, take precedence of his other works, and afford a fair example

of his great powers, and some of his great defects as a poet.

His real character, and his assumed poetical character, which was moulded upon the former, prevented him from feeling or expressing any very extended sympathy with his fellow-men. He could not be a disinterested sharer in their joys. He had no power of throwing a poetic charm over common scenes and objects, the common interests

and hopes of life. He was as little able to compose L'Allegro, or Il Penseroso, as the Analogy of Butler.

with contempt the

He professed to regard ordinary purposes and

passions of men, and those powers which are displayed in their gratification and accomplishment. He felt no enthusiasm in contemplating the energy of high and selfdenying virtue. He disbelieved, or affected

to disbelieve, its existence. Above all, he was destitute of that faith and those hopes, which connecting man, in intimate union, with the unseen and the infinite, raise him not less as an intellectual and imaginative, than as a moral, being; and present him under those relations, through which alone

he becomes an object of deep and permanent interest.

Some scenes, however, the gloomy character of Byron gave him power to conceive strongly; and with some feelings, it enabled him to sympathise. The distant roar of cannon breaking upon the gaiety of the

tult lo young and the beautiful, heard first in silence

and suspense, and then calling away the

devoted to battle and

under of pant Joangt death; the terror and

agony of such a parting; and the unavailing

lamentation over those snatched from life,