When I recount thy worshippers of yore
I tremble, and can only bend the knee ;
Nor raise my voice, nor vainly dare to soar,
But gaze beneath thy cloudy canopy

In silent joy to think at last I look on Thee!

Though here no more Apollo haunts his grot,
And thou, the Muses' seat, art now their grave!
Some gentle Spirit still pervades the spot,
Sighs in the gale, keeps silence in the cave,

And glides with glassy foot o'er yon melodious Wave.'

p. 38-39. The author then finds his way back to his subject; and gives us an animated picture of the loose and wanton gayeties of Cadiz, and the divertisements of her Sabbath, as contrasted with the sober enjoyments of a London Sunday. This introduces a very long and minute description of a bull-fight, which is executed, however, with great spirit and dignity; and then there is a short return upon Childe Harold's gloom and misery, which he explains in a few energetic stanzas addressed To Inez.' They exemplify that strength of writing and power of versification with which we were so much struck in some of Mr Crabbe's smaller pieces, and seem to us to give a very true and touching view of the misery that frequently arises in a soul surfeited with enjoyment.

Nay, smile not at my sullen brow,

Alas! I cannot smile again;

Yet heaven avert that ever thou

Should'st weep, and haply weep in vain.

It is not love, it is not hate,

Nor low ambition's honours lost,
That bids me loathe my present state,
And fly from all I priz'd the most.
It is that weariness which springs
From all I meet, or hear, or see:
To me no pleasure beauty brings;
Thine eyes have scarce a charm for me,
It is that settled, ceaseless gloom
The fabled Hebrew wanderer bore;
That will not look beyond the tomb,

p. 50-52.

But cannot hope for rest before. There are more of those verses; but we cannot now make room for them. The canto ends with a view of the atrocities of the French; the determined valour of the Spanish peasan⚫try; and some reflections on the extraordinary condition of that people,

Where all are noble, save Nobility;
Hh 2

None hug a conqueror's chain, save fallen Chivalry!'

• They

They fight for freedom who were never free ;
A kingless people for a nerveless state,

The vassals combat when their chieftains flee,
True to the veriest slaves of Treachery.'

The second canto conducts us to Greece and Albania; and opens with a solemn address to Athens-which leads again to those gloomy and uncomfortable thoughts which scem but too familiar to the mind of the author.

Ancient of days! august Athena! where,

Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul ?
Gone---glimmering through the dream of things that were.
First in the race that led to glory's goal,

They won, and pass'd away---is this the whole?
A school-boy's tale, the wonder of an hour!

Son of the morning, rise! approach you here !
Come---but molest not yon defenceless urn:
Look on this spot---a nation's sepulchre !
Abode of gods, whose shrines no longer burn.
Even gods must yield---religions take their turn:
'Twas Jove's---'tis Mahomet's---and other creeds
Will rise with other years, till man shall learn
Vainly his incense soars, his victim bleeds;

Poor child of doubt and death, whose hope is built on reeds.
Bound to the earth, he lifts his eye to heaven---
Is't not enough, unhappy thing! to know
Thou art? Is this a boon so kindly given,

That being, thou would'st be again, and go,

Thou know'st not, reck'st not to what region, so

On earth no more, but mingled with the skies?

Still wilt thou dream on future joy and woe?' &c. p. 62-63:

The same train of contemplation is pursued through several stanzas: one of which consists of the following moralization on a skull which he gathers from the ruins-and appears to us to be written with great force and originality.

'Look on its broken arch, its ruin'd wall,

Its chambers desolate, and portals foul:
Yes, this was once Ambition's airy hall,

The dome of Thought, the palace of the Soul:
Behold through each lack-lustre, eyeless hole,

The gay recess of Wisdom and of Wit,

And Passion's host, that never brook'd control:

Can all, saint, sage, or sophist ever writ,

People this lonely tower, this tenement refit? p. 64.

There is then a most furious and unmeasured invective on Lord Elgin, for his spoliation of the fallen city; and when this is exhausted, we are called upon to accompany Harold in his

voyage along the shores of Greece. described with great truth and spirit.

His getting under way is

He that has sail'd upon the dark blue sea,
Has view'd at times, I ween, a full fair sight;
When the fresh breeze is fair as breeze may be,
The white sail set, the gallant frigate tight;
Masts, spires, and strand retiring to the right,
The glorious main expanding o'er the bow,
The convoy spread like wild swans in their flight,
The dullest sailer wearing bravely now,

So gaily curl the waves before each dashing prow.

p. 69. The quiet of the still and lonely night, however, draws the author back again to his gloomy meditations. There is great power, we think, and great bitterness of soul, in the following

stanzas.

To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,

Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath neʼer, or rarely been ;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock that never needs a fold;
Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;
This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold

Converse with nature's charms, and see her stores unroll'd.
But midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men,
To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess,

And roam along, the world's tir'd denizen,

With none who bless us, none whom we can bless ;
Minions of splendour shrinking from distress!
None that, with kindred consciousness endued,
If we were not, would seem to smile the less
Of all that flatter'd, follow'd, sought, and sued:

This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!' p. 73-74.

Childe Harold cares little for scenes of battle; and passes Actium and Lepanto with indifference.

But when he saw the evening star above
Leucadia's far-projecting rock of woe,
And hail'd the last resort of fruitless love,
He felt, or deem'd he felt, no common glow:
And as the stately vessel glided slow
Beneath the shadow of that ancient mount,
He watch'd the billows' melancholy flow,

And, sunk albeit in thought as he was wont,

More placid seem'd his eye, and smooth his pallid front.

Morn dawns; and with it stern Albania's hills

Dark Sulis' rocks, and Pindus' inland peak,

Rob'd

Rob'd half in mist, bedew'd with snowy rills,
Array'd in many a dun and purple streak,
Arise; and as the clouds along them break,
Disclose the dwelling of the mountaineer:
Here roams the wolf, the eagle whets his beak,
Birds, beasts of prey, and wilder men appear,

And gathering storms around convulse the closing year' p. 81. This is powerful description ;-and so is a great deal of what follows, as to the aspect of the Turkish cities, the costume of their warriors, and the characters and occupations of their women. But we must draw to a close with our extracts; and we prefer the commemoration of classic glories. After a solemn and touching exposition of the degraded and hopeless state of modern Greece, Lord Byron proceeds

Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild,

Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields,
Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smil❜d;
And still his honied wealth Hymettus yields;
There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds,
The freeborn wanderer of thy mountain air;
Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds,
Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare:
Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair.
Where'er we tread 'tis haunted, holy ground,
No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould;
But one vast realm of wonder spreads around,
And all the Muse's tales seem truly told,
Till the sense aches with gazing to behold
The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon
Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold
Defies the power which crush'd thy temples gone :
Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares gray Marathon.

n

p. 104, 105. The poem closes with a few pathetic stanzas to the memory of a beloved object, who appears to have died during the author's wanderings among the Grecian cities.

The extracts we have now made, will enable our readers to judge of this poem for themselves; nor have we much to add to the general remarks which we took the liberty of offering at the beginning. Its chief fault is the want of story, or object; and the dark, and yet not tender spirit which breathes through almost every part of it. The general strain of the composition, we have already said, appears to us remarkably good; but it is often very diffuse, and not unfrequently tame and prosaic. We can scarcely conceive any thing more mean and flat, for instance, than this encomium on the landscapes of Illyria, • Yet

Yet in fam'd Attica such lovely dales

Are rarely seen; nor can fair Tempe boast
A charm they know not; lov'd Parnassus fails,
Though classic ground and consecrated most,

p. 83.

To match some spots that lurk within this lowering coast. Though even this is more tolerable to our taste than such a line as the following

• Death rides upon the sulphury Siroc;'

and several others that might be collected with no great trouble. The work, in short, bears considerable marks of haste and carelessness; and is rather a proof of the author's powers, than an example of their successful exertion. It shows the compass of his instrument, and the power of his hand; though we cannot say that we are very much delighted either with the air he has chosen, or the style in which it is executed. The Notes are written in a flippant, lively, tranchant and assuming style-neither very deep nor very witty; though rather entertaining, and containing some curious information as to the character and qualifications of the modern Greeks; of whom, as well as of the Portuguese, Lord Byron seems inclined to speak much more favourably in prose than in verse.

The smaller pieces that conclude the volume, are in general spirited and well versified. The three last, which are all a kind of elegies in honour of the same lady whose loss is deplored in the concluding stanzas of the Pilgrimage, are decidedly the best; and appear to us to be written with great beauty and feeling, though not in the most difficult style of composition. The reader may take the following specimens.

'One struggle more, and I am free

From pangs that rend my heart in twain;
One last long sigh to love and thee,
Then back to busy life again.

It suits me well to mingle now

With things that never pleas'd before:
Though every joy is fled below,

What future grief can touch me more?
In vain my lyre would lightly breathe!
The smile that sorrow fain would wear
But mocks the woe that lurks beneath,
Like roses o'er a sepulchre.

Though gay companions o'er the bowl
Dispel awhile the sense of ill;
Though pleasure fires the madd'ning soul;
The heart--the heart is lonely still!

My Thyrza's pledge in better days,
When love and life alike were new!

How different now thou meet'st my gaze!
How ting'd by time with sorow's hue!